Queer Masculinities in Latin American Cinema: Male Bodies and Narrative Representations 9780755694082, 9781780763200

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Illustrations 1 Molina (William Hurt) recreating his feminine  persona © David Weisman 2 Leni Lamaison (Sonia Braga) as Molina’s feminine  alter ego © David Weisman 3 Valentin’s battered body (Raul Julia) as epitome of  masculine identity and Marta (Sonia Braga) as the committed girlfriend © David Weisman 4 Fragmented queer identities: El Turu (Daniel  Valenzuela) checks Alvaro (Jorge Román) out in the changing rooms © Pablo Salomon 5 Moment of queer panic: El Turu (Daniel Valenzuela)  gets “accidentally” aroused as he thrusts into Alvaro (Jorge Román) as a form of physical punishment © Pablo Salomon 6 Gerardo (Juan Carlos Ortuño) as the abject body  © Mil Nubes Producciones 7 Susana (Salvador Alavarez) is rejected by Gerardo  (Juan Carlos Ortuño) © Mil Nubes Producciones 8 Jorge (Manuel Grapain Zaquelarez) rejects Gerardo’s  (Juan Carlos Ortuño) advances and is beaten up in the process © Mil Nubes Producciones 9 Gerardo (Miguel Angel Hope) and Jonás (Fernando  Arroyo) enjoy an erotic moment © Mil Nubes Producciones

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10 Sérgio’s (Alejandro Rojo) indo-mestizo body as Other  119 in another erotic moment with Gerardo (Miguel Angel Hope) 11 Gerardo Delgado (El Diablo) on set directing in one  173 of his films © Mecos Films 12 Diamante (Kankún García) and El Master (El Puma)  175 as protagonists of the adult saga La Putiza and La Verganza © Mecos Films

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Acknowledgements I would like to express my deep gratitude to Professor Chris Perriam at the University of Manchester whose patience, insightful feedback and continuous friendship have proved both invaluable and inspiring during this project; to Dr. Nuria Triana-Toribio at the University of Manchester for all her help, guidance and feedback throughout the various stages of writing; to Dr. Darren Waldron at the University of Manchester who offered invaluable feedback during the initial stages of writing; to Dr. Clarissa Smith at The University of Sunderland for her continuous and illuminating dialogues and advice on adult cinema, and to Dr. Deborah Shaw at the University of Portsmouth for her thorough feedback and annotated comments on the full manuscript, which were extremely helpful. I would also like to express my gratitude to Coventry University for a period of research leave granted in the autumn of 2009 to allow me to complete a first draft of this book. A special thanks to Julián Hernández for taking the time to respond to my multiple emails and numerous questions about his works, and for being kind enough to provide me with copies. Equally, thanks to Margaret Gilpin for her kind replies to my communications. Lastly, I would like to thank Gerardo Delgado for the many email and Facebook exchanges, and his candid answers, over numerous months, which helped me make sense of my ideas about adult cinema. ix

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Preface When I was thirteen years old, two events strongly marked my then closeted and troubled teenage years. Curiously, both were filmic events but each had a very different impact in my life. The first one was the release of Jonathan Demme’s Philadelphia (1993), a film that, in the eyes of a teenage boy who was petrified of accepting his homosexuality in a hyper machista context such as the one I grew up in back in South America, simply reified the fact that being gay, and openly accepting one’s homosexuality, would lead only to being ostracised and rejected by society and a certain death from HIV/ AIDS. In spite of the fact that the film tries to offer a sympathetic picture of Andrew Beckett’s (Tom Hanks) homosexuality, it is undeniable that the way the character is seen deteriorating, as a result of the virus, does very little to make mainstream audiences feel that they can see themselves reflected in the film’s protagonist. It is not my intention to downplay the importance of Philadelphia as a film both within the gay cannon and as part of AIDS cinema; however, an impressionable thirteen-year-old boy like me could not see beyond the fact that accepting his own same-sex desire would inevitably end up with him contracting AIDS and dying a painful and shameful death. Even though the film vindicates Andrew Beckett as a character when he wins the court case at the end of the story, the main message continues to be that gay men are alone in their battle against discrimination in most phallocentric societies. xi

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Interestingly, the other film that played a major role in my “gay formation” years was Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabío’s Fresa y chocolate (1993). It has been widely discussed how this film constitutes a landmark in contemporary Latin American cinema for its open treatment of homosexuality and the fact that it was highly acclaimed by the public and the critics alike. What was more interesting for me, back then, was the fact that the film was screened at one of my local cinemas, something that was unheard of at the time as most non-Hollywood films rarely made it to commercial venues. Although the film relies on what is arguably a blatantly camp gay protagonist (something I discuss at length in Chapter two), it was great to feel that I was not alone, that there were other gay men within our overtly machista societies and that their experiences were worthy of being narrativised. The ending of the film is, in many ways, similar to that of Demme’s Philadelphia since the gay protagonist falls victim to discrimination and is ultimately ostracised from the realm of society (regarded as heteronormative). I did not feel any more optimistic that Latin American society(ies) was/were ready to happily embrace homosexuals, or that the film would inspire a wave of gay people to come out of the closet. However, the film introduced me to the idea that gay men did not need to be stigmatised for their sexual preference and that perhaps society was moving forward, even if slowly, to accept those people who had, until then, been regarded as anti-normative. As for myself, it would be a few years before deciding to come out; yet 1993 not only made me realise that my same-sex desire was not as sinful and shameful as people had made me feel up to that point, but also started what would be a lifelong interest in cinema as an instrument to study the realities of subaltern groups. This book emerges, then, from a personal and academic desire to try and make sense of the way fiction cinema provides more than merely visual pleasure to audiences through its ability to portray snippets, or whole chunks of reality, and show audiences the felt experience of groups that would otherwise remain voiceless in their fight for equality. This book is not intended to offer an analysis

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of male homosexuality in the whole of Latin America through cinematic narratives, although most of the films and characters under study are gay, but the way the male body functions as the entity that conveys queer sexual identity and desire. Although the use of the word queer is in itself problematic, since in the Latin American milieu there is no such clearly defined identity as there is in the West for the Anglo reader, queer is the closest definition to some of the identities that are depicted in the films under scrutiny. As a result, the analysis is not limited to characters that are openly gay, or even closeted, but an array of characters that do not seem to define their sexual identity by the clear-cut subject positionality that comes to define gay in the West. The main preoccupation of this book is with how male (homo)sexuality is constructed and understood through what will arguably be regarded as the “queer” male body. The scope of this book is to offer an approach to contemporary Latin American male (homo)sexuality through male corporeality. The body becomes the epicentre of the analysis, as this text endeavours to delve into the way that the social imaginary is shaped by the different depictions of queer male sexuality that film directors have created or imagined in relation to gay men in the continent. This project utilises fiction cinema as the tool to study the construction of popular narratives in relation to male queer desire and the role that the male body plays in externalising or depicting such desires. Thus, fiction cinema is regarded as the instrument that embodies the values of contemporary Latin American (homo) sexuality. These films show the multiple possibilities of queer male sexuality as it operates in various regions in the continent and seeks to posit an understanding of queer male sexuality that is not necessarily built on the acceptance of a national identity or racial determinism, or a cultural and social specificity that supposedly dictates the authenticity of representation. Fiction cinema will permit to investigate, examine and challenge the mechanism through which hegemonic hetero masculinities have been constructed in the last decades in most of the continent. These films will function

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as evidence that the marginalised masculinities of such queer bodies are in clear contestation of conventional male hegemonic types. Furthermore, this book also takes into consideration questions of race and class, and how such notions contribute to the integration or ostracism of certain queer individuals within Latin American queer subculture. To this end, this project offers an examination of the impact of a generation (approximately forty years) of queer male representation in cinema. There are several films that deal with some kind of queer body and its representation that are not included in this book; however this study works on the basis that the analysis of the very specific examples offered here may facilitate an understanding of other similar instances. It is also important to signal that no empirical research was carried out to support claims of audience perception or their interpretation of the films under study. However, at times, attention will focus on the way in which audiences may be positioned or encouraged to identify with particular situations and, in the main, an “imaginary” audience is inferred. This book begins with an introduction to the theorisation of male homosexuality in the continent. It seems rather pertinent to offer an overview of the main issues that surround male homosexuality in Latin America before providing any filmic analysis. At the forefront of this chapter is the need to justify what some may see as a seemingly reductionist view of Latin America as a homogeneous sexual territory. This section will prove that there are certain traits that run along the entire continent in matters of male homosexuality and that some filmic depictions of queer male sexuality evidence such commonalities. Secondly, it will offer a comprehensive analysis of machismo in Latin America, and how it is vital to understand machismo as a sexual template in the continent since this constitutes the basis of all sexual relations in the popular imaginary. By the same token, this section evidences the evolution of machismo as both a socio-sexual practice and a mentality amongst Latin American men, and how such construction impacts upon how male homosexuality is perceived.

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Following this, the chapter explores masculinity in Latin America and tries to establish a distinction between secular machismo and masculinity; both categories are regarded as different although they may overlap at times. To finish, it will offer an overview of the way that male homosexuality has been filmed within the continent, and how such filmic representations have helped to either alienate or educate audiences in matters of same-sex desire amongst Latin American men. Chapter two will offer an analysis of stereotypical representations of male homosexuality in fiction cinema. This section explores the visual rhetoric of such representations and the visual and textual mechanisms that have been deployed to articulate notions of male homosexuality as understood in the popular imaginary. As in all sections of this book, the findings draw on queer theory and scholarship, but it does so on the understanding that such theoretical work needs to be readapted, and sometimes completely reformulated, taking into consideration recent development in queer discourses from Latin America. The main goal of this chapter is to posit an analysis of the stereotypical figure of the maricón (faggot) and how his presence on screen has largely been regarded as a way to highlight, or at least vindicate, hegemonic heteromasculinity. The films analysed here are testimony that the notion of the maricón in the popular imaginary is understood as excessive, feminine performance. The maricón has been vilified in contemporary culture he is regarded as a lesser macho, or indeed a traitor to what machismo stands for. As Jaime Manrique asserts “maricón is a word used to connote something pejorative; by implication a maricón is a person not to be taken seriously, an object of derision. Without exception, maricón is used as a way to dismiss a gay man as an incomplete and worthless kind of person” (2002: 12). This idea is closely tied up with the notion of pluma that exists in Hispanic slang to designate an extreme form of gay feminine performativity. The pluma refers to the “characteristic manners and gestures of the affected and exhibitionist homosexual, as an extreme degree of mannerism” (Rodríguez González 2008: 232). Thus, to have or

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possess pluma is to be deemed as a caricature of the feminine, as the pluma becomes an intrinsic feature of the maricón. The pluma is therefore the Hispanic modality of camp and effeminacy in popular culture. This idea could be closely linked to Judith Butler’s notion of performativity (1993, 1997, 2004), a notion that will remain paramount for the understanding of queer male bodies throughout this project. The pluma is, then, a mechanism to become gender, by way of a dynamic and corporeal process to attain sexual significance (although it would be reductionist and rather phallocentric to assume that all queer subjects want to become a different gender to that of birth). The pluma of the characters under analysis in this chapter is an effect created by the repetition over time of gestures and enactments – walking, talking, sitting, dressing, etc. – that are thought of as expressions of a particular sexuality or gender. These men, and their bodies, are believed to perform gender in an attempt to create a presentation of the self that best portrays their (homo)sexuality. However, they also demonstrate that gender can be undone and/or redone, so as to fit with specific socio-sexual situations or environments in which the performance of a specific gender could be regarded as a threat or destabilising force to the governing gender system. In other words, performativity is seen as intentionality, as a desire to portray oneself in a specific way for the benefit, or caveat, of the subject within a locus of socialisation. Gender performativity is therefore a tool to highlight or conceal sexuality (actions that may occur at the same time), to guarantee that the individual passes as either “normal” in society or challenges existing sexual paradigms. However, it is not suggested that all identity categories are necessary fictions, and this work most definitely tries to argue that identities can be natural for the queer subject, but that what is fiction is the performance/tivity of such identities. Chapter three follows on from the theorisation of sexual and gender performativity, but turns to those instances of the performance of gender that seem, on the surface, to respond to normative heteromasculinity. One of the key issues analysed here is the Latin American closet, with particular attention on how Jaime

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Humberto Hermosillo (the first openly gay director in Mexico) has explored, through his work, shifts in the politics of the closet. The work of this director could be regarded as a form of queer historiography as it clearly shows the evolution of queer politics in the country and how the figuration of the joto (another derivation of the pejorative maricón) has evolved in the popular imaginary. More importantly, this chapter attempts to theorise, for the first time, those queer bodies that depart from the figuration of the joto/ maricón as an extreme effeminate subject. It evidences the inclusion of more masculine looking/acting queer men who seem at ease adopting an entendido identity within the politics of Latin American homosexuality. The entendido subject (Murray, 1995; Subero, 2006) acknowledges his same-sex desire and actively acts on it without necessarily assuming the pluma as the way to experience or express his own (homo)sexuality. The term entendido best describes the kinds of negotiations procured by those individuals who assume their same-sex attraction as part of their sexual persona, but who do not necessarily subscribe to gay politics and, as Richard Parker asserts, it may “refer to individuals who consciously view themselves as homosexuals, as well as to individuals who do not hold a strictly homosexual self-image, but who engage from time to time in same-sex sexual practices” (1999: 265). This theorisation of entendido identity and non-pluma performativity continues in Chapter four with an analysis of Julián Hernández’s work. In this section the notions of ethnicity and body technologies further problematise the production and representation of cinematic (homo)sexuality. The work of this director merits special mention as his entire body of work has been devoted to issues of homosexuality and same-sex desire in Mexico. Hernández’s cinema seems less preoccupied with commercial success or appeal, and his work has been largely recognised as part of a new wave of young directors who are not troubled by their desire for artistic experimentation. Twice winner of the Teddy Award at the Berlin International Film Festival, this director is proof that Mexico, and by extension Latin America, is ready for more experimental cinema

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to be shown in commercial establishments and the acceptance of non-heteronormative narratives in popular filmic texts. The participation of his features in international film festivals has also permitted the commercialisation and distribution of his work beyond the Mexican frontiers. However, and more importantly, the director shows a desire to narrate stories of queer desire that include certain sectors of the population that had previously been marginalised in the constructions of national narratives, as is the case with the country’s Indo-mestizo population. This desire to narrate the story(ies) of marginal groups is carried forward in Chapter five in the analysis of transgender issues in fiction cinema. This chapter deals with those subjects who regard their biological gender as a site of repression of their inner-felt gender and sexuality. However, as it will demonstrate, most of the fiction films that have dealt with such notions in the continent have failed to offer a transgender subject who sees his transvestism as the one and only externalisation of his felt gender identity (despite existing literature on the subject that supports such a claim). In these kinds of films, and regardless of the seeming intentionality to narrate stories of transgenderism, the transgender protagonists do not appear preoccupied with assuming their feminine persona any more permanently than in a few occasions of transvestitic investment, usually as part of an onstage performance. The last chapter in this book turns to male pornography through an analysis of the work produced by Mexican porn house, Mecos Films. This section continues with corporeal homosexuality by focusing on an Indo-mestizo body that has been rejected in the national popular imaginary. The analysis of Mecos Film will tie in with the notion of Indo-mestizo homosexuality, as explored in Chapter four, and will demonstrate that this porn house, like director Julián Hernández, has tried to rescue the image of the aboriginal-looking Mexican man as an object of desire in the national gay imaginary. This chapter shows the sexual preferences that Latin American men have constructed in the subcultural imaginary as the ideal types, and how such notions can be also challenged by a reappropriation of some ethnic and body types.

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It is undeniable that the films studied here are testimony to the increasing work of lesbi-gay films that are currently being produced in the continent. Nowadays, many of the films that deal with lesbi-gay issues find themselves in a more privileged position when it comes to establishing a position within national and international film markets. It is possible to argue that in the last ten years or so, the majority of films made in Latin America which deal with queer storylines have enjoyed from moderate to fairly high commercial success, as most of them have participated in international film festivals where the critics’ endorsement and/or the awards they have won have guaranteed relatively easy access to production and distribution deals both within and outside their countries of origin. However, the ways in which some of the early films analysed here have been produced are far from easy. For instance, Babenco’s lack of success to find sufficient financial support in the US for Kiss of the Spider Woman almost forced the director to abandon his project. Indeed, the film would not have been made had it not been for the funding he secured in his native country and the fact that his lead actors offered to travel to Brazil for filming, and for relatively little pay. However, Hurt’s Oscar-winning interpretation (1985), and the fact that the film was made in English, guaranteed the subsequent commercial release of the film on video. The work of Julián Hernández follows a similar path, since the distribution rights of his debut feature were sold to Strand Releasing (for North American distribution) after winning the Teddy Award (2003) at the Berlin International Film Festival. Furthermore, he has been able to ensure that his other two full-length features have enjoyed the same success as his opera prima. What is interesting about Hernández’s work is that his films have managed to obtain international distribution before achieving this in his native Mexico. In fact, CONACULTA approached the director to release his films nationally because of their international success. Although Hernández uses his own film production company Mil Nubes Producciones, the way in which his films are made is not that different from his earlier work, as these films are low-budget and do not necessarily constitute commercial

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blockbusters. Similarly, Santiago Otheguys’s film has also been able to profit from winning the Teddy Award (2007) by guaranteeing commercial release. It is clear that some of these directors have used the Berlin International Film Festival, and other acclaimed international festivals, as a platform to promote and distribute their own work. Even when films have been made in countries where film policies are designed to aid filmmaking, the prospect of international distribution still remains largely subject to the extent of their success at international film festivals. An example is Fresa y chocolate which enjoyed the support of the ICAIC during the various stages of production but was only guaranteed widespread distribution after receiving an award at the Sundance Festival and grabbing the attention of Robert Redford and Miramax Films. Similarly, the work of Jaime Humberto Hermosillo has enjoyed modest distribution in Mexico through the support of IMCINE; yet his films have enjoyed greater distribution in Europe than in the US because he is considered an auteur (as is Hernández) and his work is both well acclaimed and sought after in European film circuits. Through conversations with some of these filmmakers and from literature available on the films analysed in this book, it has been possible to establish a pattern in relation to queer cinema in the Latin American continent (a pattern that is likely to be shared by queer cinema elsewhere). Firstly, the vast majority of these films analysed in this book are made on very low budgets even when prominent directors or those considered “auteurs” are involved, like Mexicans Hermosillo and Hernández. Secondly, they depend on a mixture of private, public and self funding although, with the advent of digital cinema, more filmmakers are finding it easier to make films with relatively little money. And, finally, they are made with film festivals in mind to boost their chances of commercial release, almost never guaranteed after production. Fortunately, most film festivals function today as a platform for commercial distribution with distribution companies (for DVD release) having turned to foreign and art cinema in the last decade after recognising

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the profitability of such films. However, despite all the difficulties to guarantee a decent budget for film production, and the uncertainty of film distribution, it cannot be denied that Joel del Río is right when he points out that, a partir de los años 80 del siglo XX, no pasa un año sin que se estrenen diez o veinte cortos y largometrajes, documentales o ficciones, con tema gay, en una suerte de avalancha que ha conseguido poner de moda el asunto según es concebido en los diversos países y culturas. La crítica internacional reconoce que, por primera vez en la historia, existe una sustantiva presencia de gays y lesbianas en las pantallas, pues hasta ahora, y en contadas excepciones, el personaje homosexual se veía reducido a lo secundario [Since the 1980s, not a year has passed without ten or twenty short and/or full length documentaries or fiction films, with a gay storyline, being released in a sort of avalanche which has made gay-themed movies “trendy”, depending on how homosexuality is conceived/accepted in different countries and cultures. For the very first time, the international critic is recognising/acknowledging the substantial presence of gay men and lesbians on screen whereas until now, except on very rare occasions, the homosexual character has been reduced to a secondary role.] (2005: 61)

Note on Translations All translations, unless stated otherwise, are the author’s own.

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1

On Contemporary Latin American Homosexuality Latin America as a coherent (homo)sexual territory? Understanding the way homosexuality operates in a continent as diverse as Latin America is a complex task. To define and theorise the way same-sex desire works in a place where different ethnicities and racial backgrounds (let alone social classes, religions and historical processes) have come to determine the way sexuality functions for both homosexuals and heterosexuals is very ambitious. The mere concept of Latin America is, in itself, subject to many different perceptions from both within and outside the continent. It is clear that Latin America can essentially be regarded as a continent that shares certain traits which go beyond territorial and linguistic unity. Melhuus and Stolen assert that Latin America as a whole shares “Indian heritage and European dominance; macho men and stoical power; violent revolutions and ruthless dictatorships; agrarian reforms and urban congestion; dire poverty and sumptuous luxury; remote hinterlands and advanced industrial enterprises; la casa and la calle; liberation theology and dependence theory” (1996: 6–7). However, it is important to distinguish between the different types of Latin Americanness that can be found in such a vast region 1

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made up from more than forty countries south of the Rio Grande. Some theorists may argue that to continue reading Latin America as a homogeneous entity only perpetuates the cycle of linguistic derogatory minimisation the continent has been subjected to since “be[ing] homogenized and trivialized by a Eurocentric construction” (Radcliffe and Westwood 1996: 03). Such homogenisation may be necessary in order to gain an understanding of Latin America as a supra-national region and, as Carlos Marichal points out, “no cabe duda que en la actualidad el concepto América Latina tiene una importancia crucial en función de la creciente globalización y de la formación de bloques supranacionales” [it is evident that, nowadays, the concept of Latin America is significant in relation to increasing globalisation and the formation of supra-national blocks] (1999: 154). And, although Latin America may posit many contradictions due to the near impossible task of unifying such diversity, both national and regional, one has to agree with Chris Girman when he points out that there is a need “to examine the region as a unified whole, not to posit a distinct homogeneity, but merely as an organizing principle that nevertheless remains open to apprehension, disagreement, and perhaps its own dissolution” (2004: 5). In other words, to say there is a real homogenisation of the likes of cultural, social, religious and political characteristics in so many countries, is not only bold but also naïve; however, it is possible to work on the basis of those common traits that are shared in various countries and that do constitute a common ground of experience in such diverse societies. For instance, and as Roger Lancaster (1997) suggests, most Latin American sexual cultures share many traits such as notions of masculinity/machismo and femininity/marianismo,1 the rigid division of activity and passivity, and honour and shame for example. Furthermore, such homogenisations also show that representations of sexuality and gender are often naturalised in both official and popular discourse within and outside the continent (Bourdieu, 1990; Melhuus and Stolen, 1996; Dore, 1997). Therefore, in this book the notion of Latin America will form part of a methodological approach to assert the idea of sameness that is present and shared by

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various countries in the continent; yet, it is not being suggested that they can all be regarded as one and the same. It is not the intention of this book to simplify or underestimate the variety of experiences of male homosexuality that can be found throughout Latin America; instead it will illustrate, through cinematic expression, how it is possible to distinguish some clear patterns of homosexual circuits of desire that apply throughout or in typical/archetypal sections of the continent.The research will focus mainly on films made in Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Cuba, Chile and Colombia. If this appears a small number of countries to analyse, it could be argued that, as Melhuus and Stolen point out “there are reasonable grounds for considering Latin America as a coherent unit for cross-cultural comparisons [that] does not imply a notion of regional consistency” (1995: 05). Furthermore, Balderston and Guy assert that “because of the uneven modernity that characterizes Latin America, as well as the fissures opened by differences of race, ethnicity, class, and religion […] the construction of sex and gender are spaces of conflict, revelatory of culturally significant issues” (1997: 03). In other words, the diversity within Latin American homosexual culture could be regarded as somewhat restricted, if it does not take into consideration the different national, regional and local factors that construct sexuality in a specific milieu. The notion of “region” must be questioned as it constitutes a slightly ambivalent idea due to differences between the national, regional and local. For the purpose of this study, the idea of region/regional, and by extension local, will be considered on a country basis in respect of those already mentioned, rather than as actual micro localities i.e. cities or neighbourhoods. Although in some instances there will be a connection to micro localities, especially those relating to transgender individuals, the vast majority of the work presented here will offer a country-based analysis. As previously noted, the list of countries is by no means exhaustive, yet from these it will be possible to draw some general conclusions in relation to the way homosexuality operates in them (conclusions that can be extended and applied to other Latin American countries), given

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that certain features of homosexual socialisation are to be found in most societies throughout the continent. The regional and local paradigms that distinguish homosexual encounters and socialisation in different localities will be acknowledged when required to clarify those aspects of the construction of same-sex desire that are not found throughout the continent but that are, nonetheless, of key importance for the purpose of this study. More importantly, analysing Latin America as a kind of homogeneous sexual terrain will allow for a theorisation of a Latin American gay identity. If, as Steve Valocchi suggests, “the identity making process occurs as a result of internal processes of network building, culture making and consciousness raising as well as external processes of social control and state regulation” (1999: 207), then it is possible to theorise a continental gay identity because most of the countries being looked at have undergone the same cultural and social processes with regards to issues of same-sex desire. Some fairly homogeneous traits of same-sex sexuality can be observed in many countries. For instance, until recently, in most countries homosexuality has been considered illegal, the majority of places for gay socialisation have remained hidden from the realm of heteropatriarchy, (homo)sexuality is understood under the passive versus active binary, as well as through what Lancaster (1997: 15–17) calls “trans-vestic” experiences where people work out sexuality through performance. The findings in this book suggest that gay becomes the primary identity of most Latin men who choose to recognise their homosexuality as their sexual identity. Latin American gay identity is therefore regarded as a discourse that is nurtured by both an international web of gay experiences (global gay identity as experienced in the Anglo-European world), and a real desire to foster a sense of national and regional identity within such discourses. As García Canclini points out in his analysis of the notion of Latin American identity, al constituirse en relación no sólo con un territorio, sino también en conexión con redes internacional de mensajes y bienes, la

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definición de identidad no debe ser únicamente socio-espacial sino socio-comunicacional. Por lo tanto, tendrá que articular los referentes locales, nacionales y también de las culturas post-nacionales que reestructuran las marcas locales o regionales establecidas a partir de experiencias territoriales distintas. La identidad se conforma tanto en el arraigo en el territorio que se habita, como mediante la participación en redes comunicacionales deslocalizadas [as a result of the constitution, not only with a territory, but also in connection to international networks of messages and material goods, the definition of identity cannot be socio-spatial but socio-communicational. Thus it has to be articulated with local and national referents and the post-national cultures that re-structure local or regional traits which are established through different territorial experiences. Identity is formed by the relation to the place inhabited and also by participating in communicational networks that are de-localised] (1994: 174).

In other words, although the different gay experiences in Latin America are de-territorialised in terms of the geographical spaces in which they occur, it is possible to locate a common ground for identity formation since most homosexual men have undergone similar experiences in their own territories. Gay identity is formed on the basis that all subjects share the same sexual desires, surrounded by stigma, along with a history of sexual repression, and the overt rejection of any sign of feminisation in their external behaviour; yet there are individual, local, regional and national particularities in the way their desire(s) are experienced. As a result, this identity is constructed from what Nelly Arenas, following on from Ortega, calls “desidentidad” (1997: 127), an identity whereby the individual is capable of identifying the inclusion of a “myself ” in the experience of the “other”. This idea is of primary importance in the construction of a Latin American gay identity, because homosexuality has traditionally been linked to foreign experiences of same-sex desire (Murray, 1995; Buffington, 1997; Fuller, 2003) in the absence of a national or continental model which provides some ground for a “truly” Latin American gay identity. Although 5

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it could be argued that what gay subjects have done in Latin America is to borrow or re-appropriate the Anglo-European gay experience as their own, this does not in turn imply that the way they have absorbed and re-worked such an identity has prevented the emergence of a type of gay identity that corresponds uniquely to Latin American territory. It is also crucial to recognise that the image of the Latin American gay man which has been exported by the media has been somewhat distorted by its focus on an extreme and exotic transvestism (for instance, Harold Perrineau’s interpretation of the Brazilian transvestite Monica Jones in Fina Torres’s Woman on top (USA, 2000)), or the somewhat caricaturised versions of machismo (a common theme and cliché in depictions of Latin men in Anglo-European gay porn). As such, gay men have been troped in two distinctive ways. On the one hand, and within Anglo-European gay circuits, an erroneous vision of Latin homosexuality circulates in which gay men are either vegetalised or animalised and presented as exotic creatures. This vision of the “lady in the tutti-frutti hat” is derived from gay icons such as Carmen Miranda (Shohat and Stam, 1994) who presented a falsified image of Latin Americanness to foreign audiences. This image of male homosexuality tends to be associated with carnival festivities and is rendered to a very specific outlet for this type of gender play. On the other hand, other gay males are seen as sharing an identity that is basically an extension of the caricature of the Latin macho that, nonetheless, has fuelled the social imagination of Anglo-European societies in relation to the way homosexuality operates in Latin America. This type of gay macho has been analysed by Christopher Ortiz (1994) in his work on gay pornography, and is one that is viewed as a person full of lust, always ready to “fuck” their partners and to display the minimum amount of emotion. Mark Simpson (1994) points out that Latin men in gay pornography are always represented as meta-masculine men; in other words, in a fictitious world plagued with perfect muscular and chiselled bodies, Latin men are always more muscular, more chiselled and always play active partners in sex. Therefore, in order

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to formulate a more accurate theorisation of Latin American gay identity it is important to separate gay men from such stereotypical views, and offer an analysis of homosexuality in Latin America that includes passive, closeted and straight-acting men, as well as other manifestations of same-sex desire that break with the prevalent stereotype circulating in popular culture. Latin America may not be a homogeneous continent where every manifestation of male same-sex desire is one and the same but, to embark upon an analysis of what could be considered as a socio-historiography of gay male identity in all its diversity will, nevertheless, propose a paradigm on how homosexuality operates as a whole in the continent.

In order to understand the way that queer (homo)sexuality functions in Latin America, and the way it is constructed in the continental popular imaginary, it is important to study what is arguably the most resonant and recognised sexual paradigm in the continent. Machismo has shaped peoples’ idea of sexuality in Latin America, since in the social imaginary it is usually seen as the only possibility for non-deviant masculinity. Machismo and masculinity are not one and the same, even though in popular culture, both within and outside Latin America, they sometimes seem inseparable. Modern research shows that Latin American masculinity has evolved, and in many cases has also departed, from the stereotypical image of the macho that has been reinforced by popular culture; yet it cannot be denied that machismo still constitutes a social construct that regulates and controls sexual behaviour (rather than sexuality). Although it has been suggested that machismo is no longer the only accepted form of externalising a man’s sexuality, authors such as Bonvillain (1995), Balderston and Guy (1997), Connell (1997), Fuller (2003), Kaufman (1997), Kimmel (1997), Mirandé (1997), Viveros (2003) and Guttmann (2006), among others, continue to acknowledge machismo as the template for masculinity in Latin America. Historically, machismo was introduced and instituted 7

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by the conquistadors as a reaction to the indigenous people’s interpretations of sexuality and gender. Some male-to-male sexual practices, as well as some transvestitic practices, were found amongst the indigenous people of America (Callender & Kochems, 1983; Kimball, 1993; Sigal, 1997; Trexler, 1999; Hardin, 2002) but were deemed as sinful and amoral in the eyes of the European invaders. Anti-sodomy laws were instituted during the colony, by both the clergy and magistrates, who saw in these same-sex sexual practices, usually male-to-male, a clear indication of the degeneration of native Amerindian customs. Over the decades, and immediately after the process of conquest began, all forms of sexual practices that contravened the existing European moral codes were more or less eradicated. Over a period of time, male supremacy became the force through which to exercise and measure power, and any sign of feminisation was regarded as a sign of weakness (Sigal, 1997; Trexler, 1999; Hardin, 2002). Consequently, the type of machismo experienced today is a combination of the traumatic scar left by the violent process of conquest and colonisation in America (Ramos, 1962; Golwert, 1983; Trexler, 1999), and the overt rejection of all forms of Europeanisation, typically associated with some manner of feminisation, that convey the idea of Anglo-European superiority (Nesvig, 2001; Hardin, 2002). In other words, machismo, as Rudolfo Anaya signals, “is essentially a learned behaviour; as such it is a conditioned behaviour. We males learn to act in a ‘manly’ way from other males around us; the ‘macho’ that preceded us was learned from the cultures from which it evolved” (1996: 59). A. Rolando Andrade (1992), following Raúl Bejar Navarro (1969), points out that machismo constitutes, in the most traditional terms, an aggressive act with life and death consequences. Andrade’s understanding of Bejar Navarro’s notion of machismo allows him to argue that, “the macho claims invincibility, sexual potentiality above normal levels, and excessive valor as he flirts with death recklessly solving problems” (1992: 33). Similarly, Josep Vicent Marques (1997) suggests that men who internalise machismo as an identity prefer to relate only to other macho men, and they

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regard their relation to women as a means to obtain domestic services or sexual favours, whereas their relation to effeminate men (not always necessarily gay) only ratifies their position of male supremacy. This idea derives from that of Shoshana Tancer who regards machismo as “the superiority of the male with the virtues of individualism, competition, domination over other men, and sexual prowess” (1973: 211). Similarly, Evelyn P. Stevens views machismo as “exaggerated aggressiveness and intransigence in male-to-male interpersonal relationships and arrogance and sexual aggression in male-to-female relationships” (1973: 90). By the same token, Marvin Leiner points out that machismo “requires individual men to make a display of physical power and social domination, and to disdain any feminine, or supposedly feminine traits” (1994: 79). He adds that social institutions such as the school, army, etc., constitute outlets of institutionalised machismo and homophobia. Although machismo overtly rejects homosexuality because same-sex desire goes against the pillars that sustain heteropatriarchy, homosexuals are necessary to the macho, so as to establish a distance between the socially acceptable and the aberrant. In other words, and as Sergio de la Mora points out, “machismo needs the joto [homosexual] to define and affirm itself as much as it needs a clingy woman” (2006: 05) because these two figures, by being the opposite contrast to what a macho is, validate this type of identity. Conversely, for Manuel Peña, real machos revere their mothers and sisters but will treat with disdain, and in many cases aggression, their wives and lovers (1991: 37). Moreover, drunkenness also plays an important role in this type of behaviour as John M. Ingham suggests because it “may also promote reproduction to the degree that it lowers sexual inhibitions and emboldens husbands to make sexual demands of their wives, despite the customary restrictions on sexual behaviour” (1986: 68), a point that Manuel Peña (1991) is also quick to highlight. As a result, machismo can be defined as the configuration of generic practices that adhere to the ideas of patriarchy that guarantee the power of men and the subordination of women. In this light Carlos Alberto Montaner argues that,

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el “macho” – a juzgar por los corridos, el cine popular o los culebrones televisivos – es un tipo mujeriego, pendenciero y amante del alcohol, que lo mismo se lía a tiros que a trompadas por defender su territorio de varón dominante. Odia a los homosexuales y de ellos se burla mediante chistes procaces – muy populares en la cultura iberoamericana – que también sirven para subrayar la hombría de quien los cuenta [The macho man, according to folk songs, popular cinema, or soap operas is a womaniser, troublemaker and loves alcohol. He is a person who is ready to draw his gun and shoot someone or get into a fight to defend his territory as a dominant male. He hates homosexuals and makes fun of them through demeaning jokes – very popular in Iberoamerican culture – that also serve to highlight the maleness of the person telling them] (2001: 107–08).

Although Montaner is quick to signal that what he describes is merely a caricature of a misogynistic and homophobic man, it is important to realise that this stereotype describes to a greater extent a type of man, and his masculinity, that still circulates and operates in Latin America. Machismo has been theorised as the masculine force which, to one degree or another, drives all male behaviour in Latin American societies; Rolando Andrade (1992) recognises four types of macho: Firstly, the conqueror macho, following Marvin Goldwert (1982) who brings together the Latino male and Freud, and who suggests that machismo is based on the role of a man as a conquering hero. His concept of conquest is not only related to the military and their cruelty, but also takes the form of other aspects of battle and engagement such as championship, virility and courage. This type of macho regards himself as a superhero and wastes no time in making sure that people around him know of his latest conquests and achievements. His second is the playboy macho, as per Fernando Peñalosa (1968) and Samuel Ramos (1962) who suggest that men consider themselves superior to women. Relations amongst these macho men are based on the idea that a real man is always willing to reify himself by making public statements about his sexual 10

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conquests whilst, at the same time, trying to belittle the conquests of his peers. Both authors point out that this type of macho is found mainly among the lower classes and that these men use their sexual prowess to compensate for their lack of social or economic achievement. For them women are disposable items which they utilise to satisfy their sexual needs as well as for reproduction, since fathering is considered a landmark of masculinity. Thirdly, the masked macho, an idea derived from Octavio Paz’s The Labyrinth of Solitude (1977), is the one whose hombría seems to be a social imposition because he has to maintain his manliness by never being seen to crack or back down. He uses his machismo to disguise his own inferiority and is not concerned with interpersonal relations or conventional morality because his machismo is in effect a façade. Finally, the authentic macho is the one whose values represent the best society has to offer; as Andrade points out “this man sees his wife and children as worthy of trust, love and respect. He recognizes the need for valor, stoicism and admits weakness while praising hard work and respect” (1992: 38–39). This type of macho is more frequently found in the upper classes, amongst men who do not feel they have to prove themselves as hypermasculine. However, this type of machismo does not form part of the social imaginary of most Latin American societies, or the idea of what constitutes machismo which has been exported to other countries. Machismo is not a social construct that only affects and has a bearing on Latin American societies; this construct also fuels the social imaginary of other cultures and societies which, although they may reject the idea of sexism and misogyny, still regard the macho as the ultimate male type. This allows Montaner to claim; la imagen actual del “macho” poco tiene que ver con aquel galante calavera del Siglo de Oro. El de nuestros días se asocia mucho más con un buen bigote mexicano, con un “latin lover” tal vez argentino, de pecho velludo, cabellera bien cuidada y fama de amante infatigable, o con un romántico guerrillero barbudo en combate permanente con su secular enemigo del ejercito, otro tipo de macho al que los caricaturistas

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se le suele representar con un aspecto bastante siniestro [The current image of the “macho” has little to do with the gentleman of the Golden Age. Nowadays, it is associated more with a Mexican moustache, a “Latin lover”, perhaps Argentinian, with a hairy chest, well-groomed hair and famous for being an insatiable lover, or with a romanticised image of a bearded guerrilla man who is in a constant battle with his secular armed enemy, another type of macho that caricaturists tend to represent from a rather sinister viewpoint] (2001: 107).

This caricaturised image of the macho Latino has been further reinforced through the media and cinema, both in Latin America and elsewhere (Peña, 1991; Andrade, 1992; Mirandé, 1997; Ramírez 2002), and has contributed towards fuelling the imagination of people in the West with regards to Latin American macho men. For instance, Rafael Ramírez and Rosa Casper highlight the importance of the macho stereotype in Western culture, and state that “machismo was presented as a Latin American phenomenon that was most notably manifested among lower-class men… [it was] exotic, an indicator of ‘underdevelopment’, a phenomenon foreign to the culture of the United States” (1999: 01–02). In short, the image of the macho has a long history of projection beyond Latin America and the way this image is received differs according to the culture for which it has been created.

The construction of masculinity in Latin America As is the case with machismo, Latin American masculinity is not a gender-based construct but a social construct that is built and reaffirmed through the learnt behaviour of the individual. Although in popular culture manhood is reaffirmed by possessing the penis, this biological organ alone is not enough to guarantee that the individual is both respected and accepted in a specific “masculine/ ist” circle. Instead, it is his manly behaviour which will ensure that his masculinity is never questioned. It has been widely argued (Mendès-Leite, 1993; Murray, 1995; Guttmann, 1996; Kulick, 12

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2003; Chant & Craske, 2003) that Latin American sexuality is constructed not on the basis of a sexual desire or identification, but on the externalisation of a specific sexual behaviour, which most people would associate with an intrinsic identity. In other words, as long as the male individual projects an image of himself which does not contravene the sexual parameters that regulate sexuality in a given space, his sexuality will not be at stake or questioned. Murray (1995), Arboleda (1995), Lumsden (1996) and Guttmann (2003), among others, argue that Latin American masculinity depends heavily on the exaggerated and overt display of hypermasculine behaviour and, consequently, those individuals whose behaviour breaks from this socially-established mould are regarded as subversive socio-sexual entities. The social construction of Latin American masculinity is modelled within a patriarchal system that defines the types of behaviours that are accepted and expected from a man. Masculinity not only offers men power over women, but it also offers a range of power hierarchies amongst different groups of men, especially those whose behaviour does not correspond to the idea of power and domination that masculinity entails socially. If, as Kimmel (1997) argues, Latin American masculinity is defined in terms of a man in power, or a man who possesses power (force, success, authority and control), then it is not surprising that even those men who sexually engage with other men regard themselves as masculine (as long as they exercise some form of power over their partner). As Murray (1995), Guttmann (1996) and Prieur (1998), among others suggest, provided that the man takes the active role during the sex act and uses his position of male domination to coerce his partner (either male or female), his masculinity will not be under scrutiny. This hypermasculinist model assumes that Latin American homosexuality is based on a rigid male-female, active-passive, dominant-submissive dichotomy. As Martin Nesvig suggests, “passive partners are denounced and the active partners are ‘tolerated’ insofar as they satisfy their male nature through the penetration of the passive body” (2001: 692). As a result, the self-assumed sexual

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orientation of men who engage sexually with other men will inevitably be related to the role they take during the sexual act rather than the sexual act itself. Latin American societies operate under a system that “place[s] a premium on masculine honour, to take the passive role and ’become female’ is to lose one’s male honour” (692). This view on Latin American (homo)sexuality is shared by many scholars (Almaguer, 1993; Lancaster, 1992; Murray, 1995, Prieur, 1998; Kulick 1998 & 2002), who all suggest that a Latin American man’s sexual identity is determined not by the biological sex of the sexual partner but rather by the culturally defined roles of active versus passive that are adopted by the sexual actors. However, in recent years, some literature on Latin American homosexuality (Parker, 1985; Mendès-Leite, 1993; Cantú, 2000; Carrillo, 2003) has departed from this dichotomised view of sexuality and, in fact, acknowledges the idea of masculine-acting (straight-acting) homosexuals. These men break the binary active/ passive because they identify with homosexuality as an identity but their socio-sexual behaviour, that is to say the way their sexuality is read by society based on their depicted behaviour, corresponds to what is usually associated with heterosexual men. Some of these more masculine homosexual men may oppose a machista ideology, yet there are still some gay men who see machismo as the forefront of their sexual behaviour and treat their male sexual partner in the same misogynistic way that most machos would treat their female partners (Cruz, 2000). Norma Fuller (2003) acknowledges three distinctive levels in which a man can prove his masculinity to the world around him: 1. the natural level (the person’s manliness), 2. the domestic level (fatherhood and marriage), and 3. the outside level (work and politics). Fuller has analysed the representation of masculinity of the urban middle-class as well as the popular sectors, and has found that their understanding of masculinity links it to macro-social processes and discourses of class and ethnicity (134). To begin with, the natural level corresponds to differences in sexual organs, reproductive roles and physical strength, as well as physical appearance. The

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penis becomes the point of departure of the ontological dilemma between straight men and their gay counterparts. If the assumption that possessing a penis guarantees manliness, then Latin American heterosexual men view homosexuality as an identity that goes against the seemingly natural desire of the penis to engage in heterosexual sex. The natural level, Fuller argues, takes into consideration strength and physical appearance, matters that become more complicated in Latin American societies since they are related to “the attractiveness that emanates from hard, muscular bodies” (139). In macho-orientated societies there is a clear distinction between men whose bodies, appearance and mannerisms seek to imitate those of the “weaker sex” and those who are more “manly”, regardless of their sexual orientation. As Michael S. Kimmel (1997) points out, when men are asked how they know a man is a homosexual, their answers make reference to a list of feminine behaviours, “a homosexual walks and speaks in a certain way, he acts differently; he is very emotional and shows his feelings to others” (58). This suggests that if a gay man behaves and acts in a way that corresponds to the social assumptions of masculinity, then his sexuality will not be considered a real threat to masculinity itself. Fuller continues her analysis with the domestic level, which constitutes a difficult terrain since domesticity in Latin American societies is commonly associated with the feminine and notions of marianismo. At this level men are regarded as fathers and husbands. Men are providers; they do not actively intervene in the order of the household but oversee its correct functioning and ensure that anyone under “their” roof is well looked after. Both Fuller and Matthew Guttmann (1996) agree that marriage becomes the passport to manhood; it becomes the moment when the young male2 becomes independent and leaves his home to become the authoritarian figure in another household. From her study, Fuller has found that the prototypical Latin man gets married to start a new family of his own, and perpetuates the cycle of macho fathers and sons that guarantees the continuity of machismo over time. After marriage, procreation is the next step into Latin American

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manhood. Fatherhood vindicates a man and makes him a respected figure in society; by becoming a father he acquires a public identity that severs all ties with his previous immature life. Since Latin American societies place great importance on the family unit, gay men are also regarded as incomplete because their relationships cannot ultimately lead to fatherhood. Even if a gay man acts in a manly fashion, and succeeds in disguising his sexual orientation to those around him, at some point the fact that he remains unmarried and/or he has no children of his own will become an obstacle to his acceptance as a truly macho man. In view of the fact that children are visual tokens which demonstrate the hombría of a man, their absence will be translated as his failure to show the world that he is a real man.

Filming Latin American homosexuality Over the last decade there has been an increase in the body of scholarly work on Latin American homosexuality, as shown by the research carried out by scholars such as Prieur (1998), Guttmann (1997, 1996), Bejel (2001), Sifuentes-Jáuregui (2002), Girman (2004), Murray (1995), Parker (2003, 1998, 1995, 1991), among others. It is undeniable that this body of work is increasing, as more and more scholars are actively engaged in trying to theorise Latin American homosexuality as a form of sexuality that has a validity of its own. However, it is clear that there is not sufficient work on Latin American homosexuality as there is about manifestations of same-sex desire elsewhere; as Nesvig points out; “the lack of narratives by gay men, the issues of ‘filtration’ of sources through those who wrote about the ‘objects’ of crime and sin, and the overall scarcity of material contribute to this dilemma” (2001: 690). Although there is an increase in the visibility of gay men characters in the media (La Pastina, 2002), as highlighted by the work of the aforementioned researchers on Latin homosexuality, it cannot be disputed that most gay men still prefer to conceal their sexual preference from mainstream (heteronormative) 16

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society, and choose to pass as heterosexual. The absence of a body of law that provides jurisprudential representation to men who would identify themselves as gay, further complicates coming out of the closet and the ability to analyse these men as a more visible social group. In spite of the fact that homosexuality is becoming more mainstream in popular culture, and that there is a more visible space for Latin gay men in society, assuming such an identity still proves stigmatising in most countries (including those where legislation seems to offer more protection to gays and lesbians). It is for this reason that one of the best ways to analyse the way the homosexual (sub)culture works throughout the continent is through cultural products such as cinema. In this medium, gay men have found and raised a clear voice that seeks to offer a representation of their lives. The research that has been carried out to date has primarily focused on the way homosexuality operates for the individual (psychologically) and for society (acceptance and/or rejection). However, very little has been written about the way homosexual men negotiate their desires in homophobic outlets, or the way the male body is (re)constructed within their subculture, or even about negotiations of same-sex desire. Similarly, very little analysis has been done on other sexual minorities, such as transvestites, even though their bodies are the locus for repression and resistance against heteronormativity. As a result, films serve as an important vehicle to gain a better understanding of the way same-sex desire and socialisation operate in Latin America. Gay-themed films offer a visible space to a minority who, as Minelle Mahtani points out in her analysis of representation of minorities in Canadian media, have been problematically treated in media accounts by means of under-representation (absence) and mis-representation (negative portrayal) (2001: 04). Although some of the filmic representations of gay men in Latin American cinema from the 1970s onwards do not necessarily escape these inaccurate portrayals, it has to be acknowledged that many films also offer a less biased account of male same-sex desire.

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The importance of filmmaking as a tool to understand the different ways in which homosexuality operates in Latin America is evident because, as a cultural product, it offers many gay men a means to acquiring an awareness of various aspects of their own (sub) culture. As Amit Kama points out in her analysis of Jewish-Israeli gay men in the media, “the neophyte gay man is embedded in a social matrix in which other gay men are usually neither visible nor accessible […] Unlike members of sub-cultures who have relatively easy access to primary socialization by agents similar to themselves, gay neophytes need to rely heavily on the public discourse in their struggle to construct identity” (2002: 196). For many gay men, these mediated images may be their first contact with a reality that remains hidden from the realm of heteronormative culture, and to which they have no access until they become active members of this (sub)culture. This project, then, seeks to offer an analysis of the way male “queer” bodies are represented in contemporary Latin American cinema. Laura Mulvey famously problematised the male body as an entity associated with activity, voyeurism and fetishism (1985). In years which followed, theorists studying the male body in media, film and the arts denounced such views as monolithic and reductionist, and declared that issues of masochism, masquerading the body and passivity can also be attributes of male bodies (Tasker, 1993; Cohan and Hark, 1994; Bordo, 1997). In Latin America, cinema has played a key role in perpetuating a system based on the passive-active dichotomy associated with gender specificity, in which males are always active and females are always passive. With the exception of some of the films analysed in this study, the cinema of Latin America has done very little to contest such views. Thus, this book explores a wide range of Latin American fiction films in order to offer some initial insight into how the bodies of “queer” male characters are (re)presented and how those (re)presentations influence, perpetuate or challenge the perceptions that different audiences have of male “queer” sexuality. It seeks to offer an answer to questions of readership and spectatorship, in the context of a transnational cinema, where Latin(o) stereotypes

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may be challenged by such texts. Finally, it also intends to establish whether the readings drawn from the depiction of homosexuality are effective and accurate in the light of transnational circulation of “queer” experiences. In other words, many of the films analysed here propose new readings of queer male sexuality beyond the active versus passive paradigms. As will be shown, many such texts seek to actively challenge the viewers’ perception(s) of queer male sexuality by presenting male bodies both as objects of the filmic gaze (both hetero and homosexual) and as desirable. Ultimately, the films also acknowledge the existence of a continental queer spectatorship who may see in these films a reflection of their own reality. By the same token, the use of the term “queer” in this book shows a political willingness to take the findings of this study beyond gay and transgender theory, as some of the bodies analysed here would not necessarily subscribe to gay or transgender politics. However, it must also be acknowledged that the word “queer” has no equivalent in the Spanish language and, therefore, to use it as a way to label the experiences of certain sexual minorities in the continent can be rather reductive. However, what the word “queer” does, for the Anglo reader, is to offer a broader scope to understand manifestations of same-sex sexuality within a wider context beyond either heteronormativism or the politics of homosexuality as experienced in the West. The closest to “queer” in the Hispanic context would be “raro” (Spanish or Portuguese) a term used to describe what cannot be explained or identified easily; quite clearly some of the bodies analysed here are “raros” because they do not fall under any identifiable category of gender or sexuality within the Latin American socio-sexual system. David Halper’s understanding of queer seems appropriate for the purposes of this project as he argues, Queer is by definition whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant. There is nothing in particular to which it necessarily refers. It is an identity without an essence. “Queer” then, demarcates not a positivity but a positionality vis-à-vis the normative. [Queer] describes

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a horizon of possibility whose precise extent and heterogeneous scope cannot in principle be delimited in advance (1995: 62).

Some of the male bodies analysed in this study can be easily identified as gay, whereas others cannot. Likewise, some of the theorisations of same-sex desire, some filmic narratives, as well as some of the diegetic articulations of sexuality in certain films, separate themselves from homosexuality or gay as an identity. Some of these filmic texts are either made by heterosexual directors whose idea of same-sex desire may be biased through stereotypical representations of homosexuality, or who may feel the need to present a more stereotypical representation of homosexuality for their films to be accepted amongst imagined heterosexual audiences. Thus, this project actively seeks to engage with those films that are trying to portray any aspect of the lives of “queer” men as they live their (homo)sexuality. However, it is important to signal that although some of the films explored in this book are adaptations of literary works, very little will be said about the original texts. Only when such clarifications are necessary to further illustrate the findings of this study, will reference to the literary originals be brought into the argument.

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2

Depicting Mariconería Stereotypical representations of male homosexuality in contemporary fiction cinema The word maricón and its different derivations are often used in Latin American popular culture to designate gay men and/or any manifestation of homosexuality. The maricón encapsulates the lack of masculine attributes; he becomes the antithesis of the “real” man who, in most Latin American societies, is embedded with the notion of the macho as discussed in the preceding chapter. The “maricón is the total negation of masculinity, an individual who is devalued and despised, and calling a man maricón is the worst insult that could ever be given him” (Ramírez and Casper 1999: 93). Mariconería, the characteristic of maricón, is constructed and rendered through two different aspects of a man’s behaviour. On the one hand, some theorists argue that mariconería is conveyed through means of performance, “whoever fails to keep an aggressively masculine front will be teased, ridiculed and ultimately stigmatized” (Lancaster 2002: 48). A man’s masculinity is never questioned as long as the individual maintains what mainstream society considers to be masculine, macho behaviour thus the maricón surrenders by offering 21

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an image of the self that is deemed unmasculine. As Kenneth Plummer suggests, “the maricón […] visibly reinforce[s] gender stratification and perpetuate[s] men’s fear of seeming effeminate” (1992: 30). David William Foster points out that, “the maricón, in particular, is characterized by his behaviour and not necessarily by either his sexual preference or his sexual acts: he is a man who displays himself publicly as a ‘woman,’ a marker, as contemporary terminology would have it, of gender performance” (1997: 74). The lack of any system of (re)presentation beyond the dichotomy of macho/mariana that prevails in Latin American societies, forces the maricón to see the externalisation of his own sexuality as inherently feminine rather than an alternative type of sexuality. Other theorists argue that mariconería is also intrinsically linked to the role played during the sexual act. For instance, Murray (1991, 1995) explains how it is considered that the maricón always plays the passive role during sex through his submission to a “real” man. Furthermore, a macho man is part of what renders the maricón as an imitation of a woman; he longs to be possessed and penetrated by what he considers real men. Similarly, Manuel Fernández-Alemani and Murray explain in their analysis of heterogender homosexuality in Honduras (as found in a lot of North American gender slang) that the maricón identity is inherently related to anal passivity and pleasure because the individual is also labelled as culero, namely someone who likes to use his culo (arse) (2002: 63–64). Although these theorists acknowledge the fact that some inserters may well play the passive role during the sexual act, this is something inserters will never publicly admit to as their masculinity would come under scrutiny if such doubts were cast upon their manliness. Ronald Edwin Long clearly points out that, most Latin countries, separate the men from the queers, the homem from the viados, the macho from the maricón, a penetrator from a willingly penetrable man. Despite the fact that a viado/maricón is a sexual bottom, he is still a man, and no homem/macho can be fucked by a viado/maricón without compromising his masculinity (2004: 51).

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In short, the figure of the maricón has played a key role in the institutionalisation of dichotomist gender stratification within mainstream Latin American popular culture, in which sexual identity is marked out by both the type of sexual(ised) behaviour that is conveyed and portrayed by the individual and by his passive preference during sex. Or, as Agnes Lugo-Ortiz points out, the maricón is “the ‘other’ that the national community’s utterances (in a fiction of oneness) simultaneously invent, obsessively desire (through its naming), reject (through denigration), fix and possess (through relentless definitions)” (1995: 117). This chapter analyses this phenomenon, exploring further the ostracising or distancing of the figure of the maricón, the dichotomy of machismo/marianismo, and the effects of performance and mise-en-scène on the representation of purported effeminacy. It shows how Latin(o) homosexuality is represented as unnatural, or at least highly dissonant in relation to hegemonic heterosexuality. To this end, this section will focus on Hector Babenco’s Kiss of the Spider Woman (USA, 1985), Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabío’s Fresa y chocolate (Cuba, 1993), and Dady Brieva and Gerardo Vallina’s Más que un hombre (Argentina 2007). The first two films are by directors who are highly committed to the militant and social function of cinema. They both belong to a generation that saw cinema as a tool of dissent, giving preference to content over form. Both films were made with low budgets at times of financial difficulty in both Brazil and Cuba (constraints that would ultimately influence aesthetic choices). Interestingly, all these films are set against the backdrop of military dictatorships1 in which notions of homosexual effeminacy further disrupt heterosexual normativity as predicated within such regimes of power, or as interpreted within leftwing revolutionary ideology. While the first two films have enjoyed both national and international success, as well as going on to win several awards, the third film has had a more modest reception. Yet, it best illustrates the way sexuality is constructed and played upon the body without being inherent to biological gender. Finally, it should be pointed out that although

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only two of the films in this analysis use Latin American actors or are spoken in Spanish, they all present storylines that are centred on representations of male homosexuality in different Latin American societies; it is acknowledged, however, that the use of non-Latin(o) actors further problematises the issues surrounding stereotypical representations of Latin male homosexuality.

Designing material mariconería: Kiss of the Spider Woman Hector Babenco’s 1985 film version of Kiss of the Spider Woman not only marks the beginning of an era of transnational collaboration between Latin American directors and Hollywood film studios, but it is also one of the first films to openly address male homosexuality in Latin America2. As is well known, the film stars William Hurt3 as Luís Molina, a homosexual found guilty of immoral behaviour, and Raul Julia as Valentín Arregui, a political prisoner. They both become cellmates in a Brazilian prison (a departure from the Argentinean prison in Manuel Puig’s original story). In order to escape their miserable reality, Luís invents and recounts romantic movies, whilst Valentín tries to remain faithful to his political beliefs (which the narrative strongly associates with his sexual identity). The film was made possible through the collaboration of a group of filmmakers from North and South America who realised the brilliance of the script. Filmed in Brazil and shot in English, the film had a fairly modest budget of one million dollars. However, it marks a turning point for independent cinema, as it became the first independent film to ever receive four Oscar nominations. Kiss has been extensively discussed in terms of the role of films (within the film) as both a strategy for survival and an inter-textual artifice (Masiello, 1978; Merrim, 1985; D’Lugo, 1990; Boling, 1990), the political dimensions of the text (Boccia, 1986; Cheever, 1987; Olster, 2003) and the (homo)sexuality and gender roles of the male protagonists (Russo, 1987; Foster, 1997; Tuss, 2000; Waugh, 2000; Wiegmann, 2003, 2004). However, this section will look at

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how (homo)sexuality is constructed via physical corporeality by taking the homosexually-marked body as its point of departure and providing an analysis of elements of the mise-en-scène as an extension of the gay protagonist’s body and his sexual orientation. From the very beginning of the film, Babenco relies on elements of visual imagery (from Molina’s body and costumes to the actual setting for most of the film) to convey and establish dichotomous relations between the protagonists’ “opposing” sexualities. Although Molina’s homosexuality in the original novel seems to be less paraphernal, in spite of his camp affectation, Babenco exaggerates his homosexuality by effeminising the objects that surround him even in the austere and clearly proto-machista environment in which he is confined with Valentín. Molina, therefore, is always constructed as the prototype of effeminacy since, as George Yudice asserts in his analysis of the work of Manuel Puig, Para los personajes de Manuel Puig lo “femenino” sólo existe entre comillas. Es más estilo que sustancia, sazón o superficie que hacen prescindible al cuerpo, más bien, lo constituyen como el juego de las luces en la pantalla del cine, lo “femenino” es para ser consumido por el ojo en un espectacular hechizo de glamour [The “feminine” in inverted commas: For Manuel Puig’s characters the “feminine” only exists between inverted commas. It is more style than substance, a flavour or superficiality that may prescind of the body. It is parallel to the lights on a cinema screen, the “feminine” is to be consumed by the eye in a spectacular glamorous spell] (1981: 43).

However, the elaborate orchestration of femaleness that Molina portrays during the first half of the film seems rather implausible considering the environment in which the actions develop. The visual disparities that are shown between Molina’s body (his masculine flesh) and the various attire he wears create a void between him and the heterosexual and revolutionary Valentín, and from the heterosexual audience the film is intended for. The effeminate style that Molina seeks to portray through his body creates yet further 25

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distance, this time between him and mainstream notions of female effeminacy, given that only he appreciates his concept of female glamour. This is illustrated in the opening sequence of the film where it establishes gender and sexual identity relations between the two male protagonists whilst placing major emphasis on Molina’s (homo)sexuality. A short voice-off, which the audience later learns is Molina’s, narrates an episode from a film. As the camera pans around the cell where both characters are imprisoned, some very feminine garments are brought into view: a flowery shirt, two long night dresses and a multicoloured scarf which is draping down from the top of the bed to one of the cell bars. The camera proceeds to pan right and down towards some photographs of film and pop female icons (notably from Hollywood rather than Latin America), and then continues to pan down to a small, makeshift bedside table with lots of makeup, brushes, rollers and other feminine accessories. This set of iconic female images and feminine paraphernalia constitute what Alejandro Yarza, in his analysis of Pedro Almodóvar’s cinema, regards as the camp altar which functions as an extension of the religious altar and through which transcendental experiences are made tangible through representation (1999: 64). In the film, Molina regards his homosexuality as a transcendental experience because he relates his own same-sex desire, as well as its externalisation, with the sort of artistic/filmic glamour evoked by the films he recounts in his cell. Molina’s altar represents the externalisation of his homosexual desires through imagery that allows the protagonist to materialise his homosexual persona, whilst claiming a space of visibility in the geographical space he inhabits. Through this imagery, he symbolically “absolves” mainstream hegemonic heterosexual culture for ostracising him due to his sexual orientation. At the same time, he constructs a personal universe created from remnants of an intimate world with himself as “believer”. In other words, he re-assigns socio-sexual meaning to certain objects that help him create his own gay micro-cosmogony. It is of little surprise that these feminine objects, in conjunction with the melodramatic and high pitched male voice in the

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Figure 1 Molina (William Hurt) recreating his feminine persona © David Weisman

background, are preparing the audience to view someone who is not only a gay man but also a maricón. Everything that surrounds Molina, even before his first onscreen appearance, helps construct him as a Latin American maricón since Babenco’s idea of (homo) sexuality is intrinsically linked to the performative aspect of sexuality 27

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as understood in the continent. Molina creates his own version of a sexualised self, based on aesthetic choices that he believes contribute towards highlighting his effeminacy (Yudice 1981), whilst Babenco4 clearly stresses the character’s continuous struggle (through body enactments) to become, as Jorge Panesi asserts, “el prototipo de lo mujeril” [the prototype of the feminine] (1983: 903). In the film, the camera moves away from the empty bed and pans back up to show, in close-up, a hand (Molina’s) grabbing a red towel. Molina then proceeds to wrap it around his head like a turban. It is clear here that the character has decided to fully display his assumed inner effeminacy as, “frozen in feminine dynamics, he chooses the red towel and makeup mask to costume his persona” (Wiegmann 2003: 171). Babenco successfully utilises, in one short scene, all the elements constitutive of the hetero-hegemonic gay stereotype that views homosexuals as individuals who can only validate and make sense of their own sexuality through a process of female mimicry. This is all the more evident as the scene cuts into the cinematically-fuelled world of Molina’s imaginary narration of a film in which, as Michael Dunne suggests, “Leni’s [Sonia Braga playing one of Molina’s cinematic alter egos] lavish environment interacts with that of the prison. Hurt’s Academy-Award-winning interpretation of Molina, with his head turbaned in a towel, interacts with Leni in her bath” (1995: 16). This image only serves to further Molina as an artificial creation (at least in terms of his sexual persona). Braga’s interpretation of Leni reifies the idea that Molina not only desires but also regards himself as the Leni of his stories, and yet he is an androgynous type of heroine (Wiegmann, 2003) whose ambivalent physicality continues to alienate the people around him. Molina’s externalisation of his own sexual self is presented from a space of in-betweenism (Dyer 2002a) in which neither his masculine nor his feminine self are read as distinctive. Although it is possible to argue that his blatant campness could be regarded as a strategy of defiance towards hetero-hegemonic culture, the considerable process of de-camping he goes through during the film (as a direct result of

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Figure 2 Leni Lamaison (Sonia Braga) as Molina’s feminine alter ego © David Weisman

his desire to engage with the sort of prescribed sexuality that may eventually allow him to be accepted as an equal by his cellmate) only goes to suggest that there is nothing natural about his own version of sexuality. The director’s desire to exaggerate the feminine qualities already present in Puig’s Molina offers a more typical representation of homosexuality for the heterosexual audiences the film was intended for. As Brett Farmer clearly points out, “the diegetic ambiguity of the establishing tracking shots situate Molina within a semiotic economy of mystery and foreboding whilst the juxtaposition of contrasting visual and aural signifiers across his body encodes him as a freakish figure who disrupts, even perverts, the gendered categories of hegemonic meaning” (2000: 23). This is all the more obvious at the end of the sequence where the camera tracks down Molina’s gowned body but, as he rises up from his chair, a medium to close-up shot focuses on his hairy legs and calves as he walks across the cell. This breach of the heteronormative sexual symbolic order through disruption of the female order – in 29

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other words the flowery oriental gown in stark contrast to male corporeality – only posits Molina within the Latin American social imaginary (heterohegemonic by nature) as a type of deviant body whose “mariconería is a devalued act or object that merits ridicule” (Ramírez and Casper 1999: 93). Throughout the film, Molina’s mariconería is repeatedly emphasised through contrast with Valentín’s hetero-macho appearance and his resemblance to the iconic image of Ché Guevara5. As Wiegmann (2003) and Restom Pérez (2003) affirm, Julia’s Valentín is presented as the epitome of political commitment and the Latin American guerrilla ideal of male beauty. Interestingly, the audience’s first glimpse of Valentín, seen through a static long shot, is of his sweaty back as he lies on one of the cell beds. His clothes, a blue shirt and jeans, in stark contrast to Molina’s “female attire” and his dirty feet, give him an air of earthy manliness and the impression that he is having a harder time in prison than his homosexual cellmate. The reason for his resemblance to el Ché could not be more poignant as Valentín becomes Molina’s own iconic guerrilla fighter who is not only the herald of hope, but also the embodiment of every value associated with manhood in the Latin American imaginary. Molina, on the other hand, is not only presented as the stereotypical maricón, but also as the recurrent presence of his feminine alter-ego, Leni, the female protagonist of his imaginary Nazi film who functions as an extension of his own gay persona. With Leni’s presence, the director invites the audience to watch how Molina’s female psyche views him as a woman who uses cinema as a form of escapism. The physical and social constraints that are in place within heteronormative Latin American society do not allow Molina to fully embrace and, at the same time, externalise his assumed sexual persona. Both Leni and Spider Woman from the story which remains unfinished at the end of the film (played once again by Braga), are both archetypes of a type of femininity that Molina seeks to attain and that he considers the only one that fully depicts his own version of femininity. Staying with this line of thought, Gustavo Pellón asserts, “what underlies this pre-eminence is the belief that the most exploited segments of

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society are the ones most in need of the agency of a kitsch paradigm which will supplement the great deficiencies in their lives” (1983: 189). Interestingly, and as previously noted, the first time Leni is shown onscreen as the female protagonist in Molina’s fictional Her real glory, she is in a bath with a towel wrapped around her head in much the same way as her homosexual creator. The “dreamy” sequence in washed-out colour parallels the post-shower routine that Molina has just performed on-screen, of which spectators have only witnessed the last part. However, whereas Molina’s enacting of his own film is highly camp, so offering a rather caricaturised version of himself, his narration of Leni’s film sequence, seen through a series of medium shots of the beautiful Braga (her Latin features disguised as Nordic), seems to evoke the glamorised heroine of early Hollywood fiction cinema. The Molina/Leni/Spider Woman’s visual, as well as inter-textual relationship, remain paramount throughout the film in order to show different aspects in the construction, enactment and portrayal of the character’s gay persona. As Patricia Santoro suggests, “as Molina tells his movie tales, he symbolizes the more superficial reading of the film. He is the spectator who projects himself onto and identifies with the heroine (in this case not the hero, for Molina considers himself a woman)” (1997: 134). Braga’s Leni must be understood as an extension of Molina’s own persona, and her body as an extension of Molina’s own body, hence as Bruce Williams argues “Molina […] accepts Leni LaMaison to constitute an accurate reflection of his own subjectivity” (1999: 87). Leni’s hyper-femininity is a reflection of Molina’s homo-femininity, and Molina uses cinematic female references to construct a version of his own femininity where such female archetypes are used “as metaphors of relationships that transgress the gender boundaries of patriarchy” (Wiegmann 2004: 398). This is all the more obvious as Molina goes through a process of feminising his presentation of the self by applying makeup and improvising a costume with a pale blue flowery kimono. However, his version of femaleness renders Molina as a character that “se queda atado al estereotipo de la loca

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en el cine norteamericano” [ [He] remains linked to the stereotype of the North American queen] (Restom Pérez 2003: 310). The fact that both Leni and Marta (Valentín’s revolutionary girlfriend) are played by the same actress furthers the idea that it is not only female corporeality, but also the type of femininity portrayed by both characters, that will appeal to the heterosexual protagonist (something Molina lacks). Williams already points out, “the use of Sonia Braga in this triple role [along with Spiderwoman she also plays the main character of the unfinished story that Molina begins just before he is released from prison] implies a complex slippage, for if Molina imagines himself as both Leni and the Spider Woman, then by implication he has equated himself with Valentín’s lover” (1999: 91). In spite of all the artifice that Molina utilises to (re) create his homo-femininity, as well as his many attempts to recreate hetero-hegemonic love scenarios, his body is always presented as an obstacle to achieving sexual fulfilment, because it works as a constant reminder of what he is not, that is a real (biological) woman. Moreover, Molina’s manly features seem to become more noticeable as the film progresses. As Dunne (1995), SifuentesJáuregui (1997), Tuss (2000), D’Lugo (1990) and Wiegmann (2003, 2004) suggest, this could be read within the context of an internalisation of some of the political ideologies of his cellmate, but also as a voluntary renunciation of his own homo-feminine body in order to achieve a level of physical equality (although never fully accomplished) with his beloved Valentín. This is obvious from the sequence where Valentín, peering over the top of his cell, witnesses the prison guards dragging a badly tortured man back to his cell while Molina continues with his narration of the Nazi-set love story. Molina’s process of defeminisation is highlighted by a close-up of his stubbled face devoid of makeup, and yet he is wearing a pair of big, round yellow earrings. It is clear that the Molina of the opening sequence, the one surrounded by an aura of homo-femininity, is making an effort to observe the more rigid code of hetero-masculine behaviour his cellmate adheres to. Even though David William Foster argues that by doing so Molina

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is “contaminating his ‘gay sensibility’ with a degree of stern, self-denying seriousness that is anathema to the enjoyment of life” (1992: 127), it is clear that the film proposes such a mutation as the only viable way for the two characters to reach a level of equality. This visual transformation (or mutation) is further stressed by the intent focus on a semi-naked Valentín stepping over the cell bars with his legs wide apart. And yet Molina’s process of defeminisation will also be truncated by his homosexuality because it is viewed as a shift from subversive towards prescriptive social normativity. Unsurprisingly, Molina’s body, in the last few sequences (from his release from jail and visit to the gay club, to the moment he is killed) seems to be at the junction of hetero and homosexuality. He no longer wears the feminine costumes or behaves in the womanly manner as he did in prison; yet he wears a red scarf which will identify him to Valentín’s comrades and as Wiegmann argues, “he chooses a red scarf, an adaptation of masculine dress that retains his identity as a gay male” (2003: 171). Throughout the film, the bodies of the two male protagonists are always contrasted as sexually oppositional not only in terms of their self-assumed sexualities but also in the way such sexualities are played out on their own bodies. For instance, in the very last sequence of the film, there is a sharp contrast between Molina’s wounded and yet clean body (even the blood that pours from his mouth does not seem nearly red or thick enough), and Valentín’s tortured and bruised body (shown through a long shot of him in bed in marks and scars). The end of the film therefore seems to suggest that Molina’s homo-feminine body is not capable of resisting the degree of torture that a real macho can endure, and so clearly associates homosexuality with female subjectivity while rendering the homosexual man as inferior to heterosexual men.

Flavour queens: Fresa y chocolate In Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabío’s Fresa y chocolate (Cuba, 1993) the claim for gay political activism, as well as the 33

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Queer Masculinities in Latin American Cinema Figure 3 Valentin’s battered body (Raul Julia) as epitome of masculine identity and Marta (Sonia Braga) as the committed girlfriend © David Weisman

homo-eroticisation of the gay body, is at first highlighted through the performance of the gay protagonist and the mise-en-scène that defines his own private realm, to then be eliminated from the political agenda of the film in what could only be deemed as an act of machista castration of this character. Nonetheless, Diego’s (Jorge Perugorría) homosexuality and his own gay-ed body function as constant visual reminders of what he is rather than who he is, that is a maricón. In spite of many critics reading Diego as essentially feminine (Smith, 1996; Shields, 2004; Chanan, 2007), Gutiérrez Alea is reluctant to admit that his character provides a stereotypical depiction of the maricón. For instance, in interview with Dennis West for Cineaste, he states; He’s definitely not a stereotype. Diego is not really even a loca. The  equivalent in English of loca is “queen” – a gay who expresses himself in a very extroverted, very spectacular manner, who flaunts his homosexuality. His homosexuality is at the center of his social being. Diego, on the other hand, is a gay who has other concerns. He is a

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Now, it is true that at certain times he does conduct himself in a slightly effeminate way. For example, at the beginning of the film, when the characters are in the Coppelia Ice Cream Parlour, Diego conducts himself in an ostentatious way because he is committed to conquering that young man. But, afterwards, little by little, his conduct becomes more sober. In other words, he’s definitely not a stereotype (1995: 17). It is undeniable that the character undergoes a process of de-camping of his (homo)sexual persona to the point that, by the end of the film, his flamboyance and effeminacy have been toned down to a minimum to allow the socio-political reading of the film to be effectively voiced through a character that does not constitute a caricature of the feminine (even if such a depiction is symptomatic of a hetero-repressive society). The director’s own words bear witness to this intentional de-camping of the character, indicating a clear desire to tone the character down so as to make him more appealing to the heterosexual audience the film is clearly intended for. In the film, the narrative point of view that will prevail for the most part, that of David (Vladimir Cruz), is established from the very moment both characters come into contact. This heterosexual point of view will ask audiences to see Diego from a heterosexual stand and regard him as a sexual Other. For instance, in their first meeting Diego, shown through a low angle shot, is carrying a tray with ice cream in one hand, a bunch of sunflowers in the other and a handbag on his shoulder. This kind of artificially constructed depiction of the gay character early in the film invites the audience to look at this maricón as a parody of the feminine, for a moment at least. In a high-pitched voice and an almost squeaky yell, the flamboyant Diego interrupts the pensive David with a loud “con permiso” [excuse me] and proceeds to sit at the same table. David, shocked by the maricón’s interruption, tries to move to what seems to be the only other empty table in the ice cream parlour but is

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refined and cultivated man who is relatively mature, and he conducts himself as a normal person. But, of course, as he says, he likes men.

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beaten to it by Germán (Joel Angelino) who is obviously another maricón friend of Diego’s (his mariconería easily recognisable through his dyed red curly hair and his effeminate mannerism at the table). Diego’s otherness (his homosexuality) is further highlighted through an array of books that portray him as both a very cultured individual and a subversive element within the communist regime, the books having been prohibited by the government. The books could be read as extensions of Diego’s own body since they serve to complement the character’s gay persona and his degree of effeminacy. The directors do not attempt to problematise his body by presenting it in a way that could confuse or blur gender dichotomies. Camping the character through visual elements permits to assert that, as Richard Dyer suggests, “there are signs of gayness, a repertoire of gestures, expressions, stances, clothing, and even environments […] that bespeak gayness, but these are cultural forms designed to show what the person’s body alone does not show: that he or she is gay” (2002: 19). The homosexualisation of Diego through the mise-en-scène reaches its peak in Diego’s flat. After leaving Coppelia, the two men arrive at Diego’s flat, since Diego has promised David some photographs of him acting in a university play. In Diego’s flat the idea of the gay altar, briefly explored in the previous chapter, is amplified as the entire flat becomes a gay altar seeking to highlight the owner’s sexual orientation. The flat is not an altar because of the abundance of religious iconography but instead, with its array of different images and icons it constitutes a space created by Diego which allows him to get closer to a transcendental experience. Here he can be gay and express his homosexuality openly in an essentially homophobic country with a dictatorship in power, by displaying a sense of religious fervour towards the objects in the flat. This amalgamation of images is utilised to construct and define identity by allowing the individual to establish proximity with a divine experience that it is nothing but a reflection of the true self. In Fresa, Diego’s flat is regarded as a property of his own body; it is an extension of his (homo)sexual persona (Smith, 1996)

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and, as such, cannot be read simply as a “recoleto museo camp” [extravagant camp museum] (Marcé 2002: 118). However, it is clear that Alea is still fully committed to the postulates of New Latin American Cinema, awarding more importance to content over form. Thus, the film relies on a neo-realist approach in which the camp iconography that reflects the character’s homosexuality is presented through static medium and close shots without any elaborate editing. As Carlos Campa Marcé has argued, “Fresa y chocolate no es un filme espectacular o sorprendente desde el punto de vista visual, y […] parece un talking (not a moving) picture” [Strawberry and Chocolate is not a visually spectacular or surprising film from a visual point of view and […] seems more like a talking (not a moving) picture] (2002: 95). Nonetheless, the camp iconography that composes and constitutes this space provides a visually economical means to externalise the protagonist’s sexual orientation: the geographical space, in this case Diego’s flat, metaphorises a recycled camp economy with the recycled object that is placed on the altar being emptied of its normal content and filled with a symbolic and spiritual content by the “believer” (Yarza 1999). Diego, as builder of his own altar, does not distance himself from his own creation (something that camp art achieves through irony); instead he places emphasis on the reinsertion of the object(s) within a different context (different from the one it was originally intended for) and so the object’s new meaning emerges from its position within this new context. This idea echoes that of Dyer (2002) who claims that, in order for the homosexual subject to be visually read as gay, he is usually presented within a context that denaturalises heteronormativity and creates a new libidinal space that seeks to de-stabilise, or at least confuse, gender dichotomist relations and encourage gay typification. This place (re)presents a politically and culturally dissident coding because it is not only a subliminal extension of Diego’s (homo) sexuality, but also of his cultural and political degree of otherness as he sets out against a system that tries to suppress and censor him in every aspect of life beyond his sexuality.

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The blurring of the heteronormative gender dichotomist relation hombre/mujer is also emphasised through Diego’s body, as the film frequently proposes a conflict between the protagonist’s handsome and virile body (epitomising the cliché of the hombre de pelo en pecho,6 as will be argued below) and the feminised garments of clothing he wears during the first half of the film. For instance, on David’s second visit to the flat, Diego’s body is problematised for the first time as it is presented at the intersection of masculinity and femininity, as understood within heteronormative culture. As the gay man opens the door, the audience are made aware of his hairy chest, a trait usually associated with the stereotypical image of the macho man (Ramírez Berg 2002); yet he has on a low cut vest (front and back) that looks more like something a woman would wear. Here, what Dyer refers to as in-betweenism (2002a: 30–37) becomes a conscious strategy to offer an ambivalent image that both repels and seduces the heterosexual receptor. The contrast between the soberly dressed David (always in a buttoned-up, short-sleeved shirt and jeans), and the more exhibitionist Diego (who alternates between wearing items of clothing like the vest mentioned above and various dressing gowns) work towards materialising the protagonist’s sexual orientation. Diego’s predilection for invariably showing off his chest reflects a desire to eroticise his body, in an attempt to seduce the young militant. However, Diego’s feminisation of his body cannot be regarded as transvestitic or a manifestation of any other type of cross-dressing. It is certainly not a demonstration of genderfuck or some kind of drag investment as it lacks the spectacularisation of such practices or the purposely-essential gender ambiguity they embed (all of which are discussed at length in Chapters Five and Six respectively). In spite of the gay protagonist’s obvious attempts at feminising his own image, he makes sure that his masculine attributes are not completely erased from his presentation of the self. Furthermore, the inclusion of Germán as a more hyper-feminine gay character helps read Diego as less camp in his own performance of the sexual self. A key scene between the two homosexuals that shows their different degree of

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gayness takes place in Diego’s flat, when Germán tells Diego that he has accepted the invitation to take his exhibition to Mexico, offered on the condition that some of the more controversial pieces are taken out. What starts off as a fight between two screaming queens ends up with Germán in a display of female hysteria (to borrow a Freudian term), caught in a medium shot smashing one of the statues on the floor before a close-up shows the maricón crying inconsolably. Germán’s display of what is considered within heteropatriarchy as a sign of irrational female behaviour, allows the audience to view Diego in a slightly more masculine light, and as Joel del Río has already claimed “Germán, el amigo de Diego, [está] cargado de elementos negativos de todo tipo y representado de modo hasta repulsivo” [German, Diego’s Friend, is surrounded by many negative elements and depicted in a repulsive manner] (2008); however, the way Diego steps back against the wall as he cries and places his hands over his mouth, in both disbelief and sadness, still presents him as an effeminate character. After this series of events the filmic heterosexualisation of Diego begins which will culminate with one last failed attempt at seducing David whom Vivian (Marilyn Solaya), after meeting him, has asked to become her lover. David turns up at Diego’s flat and drinks himself into oblivion in an act of macho despecho before passing out on the sofa. Diego, wearing only a dressing gown which shows once again he is a maricón de pelo en pecho, lusts over David’s unnecessarily and diegetically unjustified semi-naked body. For once, the camera reflects the maricón’s viewpoint with a tracking medium shot down David’s shirtless body showing jeans which are also needlessly unbuttoned, allowing the audience to see the trail of hair from his navel to his crotch. This is the first time that David’s body is eroticised through a gay gaze but the directors decide that the only way to redeem the gay character is to show him giving up his sexual desires (visually intimated when Diego covers David with a blanket) and resigning himself to a platonic relationship with the young man. This brief manifestation of the gay gaze cannot be seen as an attempt by the directors to reclaim

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the gaze in an act of gay empowerment since they both claim that this film is about tolerance and that its “gay subtheme is merely an illustration of that question” (Cineaste 1995: 23). It is clear that Gutiérrez Alea and Tabío regard such a repositioning of the gaze as a feature that could potentially alienate the heterosexual audiences the film appears to be aimed at. It is of no surprise, then, that this moment of gay visual pleasure cuts almost abruptly to a long, slow tracking shot of a fully naked Nancy (Mirta Ibarra) as she performs a santería [witchcraft] ritual to attract David’s love. After this incident, and as part of Diego’s decision to pursue purely David’s friendship, he begins a process of de-camping his maricón flamboyance in an attempt to be seen as an equal in David’s eyes. This process of de-camping comes as a surprise (to the gay audience at least) since, in one of the key sequences in the film Diego is seen asking his young friend to leave his flat after the latter questions the maricón’s commitment to the socialist cause on the grounds of his effeminate mannerism. In spite of the fact that in this sequence Diego claims that gay male effeminacy should not detract from a person’s political commitment, later in the film he begins a process of taming his own homosexuality. It could be suggested that this process of gay submission to the hegemonic power(s) of machismo begins at a symbolic level when David imposes elements of his own cubanidad onto Diego’s flat, while a disapproving but passive Diego accepts this imposition. As this sequence opens, a wide shot shows a disapproving Diego, arms folded and standing with his foot resting on his knee in a position that resembles a ballet releve devant, before the camera cuts to a close-up of David’s hands hanging up pictures of Ché Guevara and Fidel Castro in the flat. When the camera cuts back to Diego he is playing with his earlobe, continuing to watching David’s actions disapprovingly. His inability, or indeed unwillingness, to stop the young militant from leaving his mark in the flat (and hence on Diego himself) and re-appropriate the space as his own, show that Diego has already assumed a kind of mariana position in which he will not question “his man’s” decisions. This effeminate behaviour is further stressed by the way Diego moves across to

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the chair where he sits cross-legged in a quite feminine manner. Although reading the character’s mannerism as effeminate could be regarded as somewhat problematic, it is clear that the directors have opted for the type of masculine behaviour that is usually misconstrued as effeminately gay. Thus, Diego’s behaviour is regarded by David, who at times is openly critical, as an artificial social construction that, while it may help read him as a sexual Other, also ostracises him from the realm of heteronormative society. In this scene, the directors offer a parallel between the metaphorical “fucking” and the psychological castration of the gay male protagonist. By becoming more butch (in both appearance and mannerism) Diego reinforces the idea that gay effeminacy is symptomatic of a de-naturalisation of the subject’s socio-sexual behaviour and that as such, it can be “cured” provided the gay subject’s behaviour is properly channelled. The idea of a natural masculine or feminine identity constructed on the basis of a biological gender that Diego seemed to disavow in his “pro-gay speech”, is rendered false as he himself ends up behaving in a more masculine manner in order to be regarded as an equal by his heterosexual friend. Diego therefore constructs a heterosexual role that will permit him to enjoy a degree of closeness with the person who has become his object of desire. His more masculinised identity is manufactured in a bid to gain a heterosexual friend(ship) which is all he can hope for as any possibility of a different kind of relationship with David is seen as impossible. By the end of the film, David feels sufficiently at ease to make fun of the type of effeminate sexual behaviour Diego had exhibited when they first met. The extreme effeminate mannerism that David constantly criticised Diego for during the film, now becomes the very element he utilises to offer a burlesque parody of the gay man, confident that this kind of behaviour no longer poses a threat to his own sexual persona or social image. David parodies Diego’s effeminacy from a position of gender superiority. He considers that his heterosexuality, which could be questioned given the many instances of homo-eroticism in the film, offers him a safety net that guarantees that his own sexual orientation will

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not be questioned through his display of effeminate behaviour. As Anne McClintock argues in her work on race, gender and sexuality in the colonial context, “privileged groups can, on occasion, display their privileges precisely by the extravagant display of their right to ambiguity” (1995: 68). For instance, at the end of the film the two protagonists once again go to the ice-cream parlour and sit with their ice-creams. However, there is a reversal of the hyperbolic symbolism of the ice-creams (in which chocolate is equated with hetero-masculinity and fresa with homosexuality), when David swaps the two ice creams around and changes both voice and mannerism in an attempt to mockingly recount their first meeting. David is shown through a medium close shot taking his first spoonful of ice cream; the camera then cuts to an over-the-shoulder shot of David which reflects Diego’s point of view and shows David taking his first mouthful, waving the spoon around in a very maricón manner and exclaiming in a high-pitched voice, “Umm, es lo único bueno que hacen en este país. Umm, una fresa. Hoy es mi día de suerte. ¿Alguien quiere?” [Uhmm, it’s the only good thing made in this country. Uhmm, a strawberry. Today is my lucky day. Who wants some?]. This parody of effeminate homosexuality shows how humour is used to counteract any possible homosexual fear arising from the overt display of homosexual behaviour, and as an instrument of sexual oppression towards sexual minorities. David’s effeminate performance only serves to stress his adherence to dominant heteronormativity and his body is never problematised as ambiguous or gay. The same can be said in the scene where David is drunk and lead to the shower wearing only his underwear by his friend Miguel (Francisco Gattorno), also semi-naked. The men’s seminakedness, playfulness and interactions are never regarded as anything but homosocial behaviour, simply because their actions are always safeguarded by heterosexual normativity and machismo. Although Paul Julian Smith argues that “the overt message here is the grossness of homophobic intolerance, so different to the cultured gentility of the homosexual who is its victim” (1996: 90), it is possible to see how the cultured gentility of the homosexual

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subject only serves to reify the idea that homosexuals are regarded as effeminate and lacking in essential heterosexuality qualities. On the other hand, and in relation to Roger Lancaster’s (1997) discussion regarding passing as gay as a type of sexual mockery, David’s mocking performance cannot be regarded as purely hostile mimicry since it has been sufficiently suggested in the film that he finds such effeminate behaviour exotic and intriguing though he understands that heteronormative society disapproves of it. The act of passing as gay/queer reifies the position of gender and sexual supremacy of heterosexual men, while it presents the gay body as artificial because it has no intrinsic adherence to a “natural” behaviour prompted by biological gender. It is undeniable that, as Anitra Nelson argues, “the film develops David in a fiercely heterosexual direction, thereby creating a constant tension and suspense between him and the character of Diego” (1997: 104). However, this supposed “tension” between the two male protagonists fades away as Diego conceals his allegedly “natural” effeminate behaviour by masking it as heterosexual (or at least hetero-conformist).

De/constructing man-iconería: Más que un hombre Mimicking or passing as gay can be regarded as a strategy utilised by heterosexual men in order to establish a relation of power hierarchy towards homosexuals. Raz Yosef points out in the context of Israeli cinema, “by passing as gay, the heterosexual could better govern and regulate homosexuality, thus making passing an allegory of heterosexual power” (2004: 116). As a result, the kind of passing that is observed in Dady Brieva and Gerardo Vallina’s Más que un hombre (Argentina, 2004) becomes a strategy that serves to de-stabilise the supposed naturalness of heterosexuality assumed in hetero-hegemonic societies in much the same way that the de-machoing of the heterosexual protagonist in the film also highlights the degree of artificiality that exists within the politics of heteronormative representation. Although the main storyline of the film does not revolve around the gay protagonists passing as 43

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straight, the film questions in many instances the alleged naturalness of heteronormativity as well as its accompanying socio-sexual behaviour. Even though Telmo (Luís Ziembrowsky) offers a camp version of his homosexual self, and his body seems neither to be placed at the intersection of hetero/homo-sexuality nor offer an image that blurs heteronormative masculine behaviour or appearance, his effeminate mannerism, his vanity (the need to wear a wig to conceal his baldness) and his job as a tailor, all work towards artificially constructing and emphasising his sexual orientation. In the film, the concealment of homosexuality through behaviour and speech, which Rapisardi and Modarelli (2001) described as a strategy of survival for many locas during the last Argentinean dictatorship, is not paramount for the safeguarding of the gay protagonist because he operates in contexts where his homosexuality is socially tolerated. The protagonist’s house seems to function as a space for homosexual socialisation, or at least encounters, that disavow the kind of furtive unions that were generated in public spaces (parks and public toilets) as homosexuals tried to escape repression. Such liberties are enjoyed, and diegetically justified, only because Telmo is making the wedding dress for the Coronel’s daughter and is therefore protected, to some extent, by a figure of authority within the regime. What separates this film from previous depictions of (homo)sexuality is the way it raises questions about the politics of representation within political activism (from a left-wing perspective and in stark contrast to depictions offered by films such as Kiss) while contesting the idea that hetero-masculinity is intrinsically natural to biological men. In the previous two films there is a more direct link between political activism and the politics of representation of the male body. In these films, heterosexual male bodies are regarded as hard bodies, a term coined from Yvonne Tasker’s (1993) work on gender, genre and action cinema, through which the characters’ heterosexual masculinity is constantly tested, reaffirmed and never called into question. Conversely, the male bodies in Hombre manage to cross over from hetero to homosexual grounds through their own physicality as well as their performance of the gendered self. In

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the film, Olaf (Julián Krakov) is depicted as a type of guerrilla man whose physical appearance seems to evoke that of iconic guerrilla figures such as Ché Guevara; yet he is stripped of all the visual elements that construct him as a guerrillero as the film attempts to re-evaluate the relationship between hetero-hegemonic masculinity and political activism. While at the beginning of the film, Olaf shows a clear repulsion towards Telmo’s homosexuality (read through his overt effeminacy) and lack of political commitment, the film deals more effectively with the psychological and physical transformation of the character as he starts to question notions of rigid hetero-sexuality, as well as discrimination against people whose behaviour falls outside such ideas. The scene when Olaf is transformed from a bearded guerrillero into a baby-faced young man is paramount in showing that the politics of the body within heteronormativity have been radical in their assertion that physicality and political alignments are mutually exclusive (Johnson, 2002). As Telmo returns home from shopping, he finds Olaf and his mother (Raquel Albeníz) in bed together knitting. When Telmo asks Olaf what he is doing, the young activist replies uneasily that his only reason for doing such a feminine activity is to help him relax. At this point, Telmo asks the young bearded Olaf to come through to the bathroom; the scene then cuts to a medium shot of Olaf, shirtless and with head tilted back, which reveals his shaven face and newly dyed hair, with the tailor – clearly responsible for the makeover – standing behind him. As Olaf studies his transformation, with Telmo simultaneously touching or massaging his head, he tries to reconcile Telmo’s appearance and sexual behaviour by asking him: “¿vos cómo pensás? ¿pensás como un hombre o como una mujer?” [Do you think like a man or a woman?], to which Telmo replies, looking straight into the camera: “como un puto […] yo soy más que un hombre pero menos que una mujer” [as a faggot […] I’m more than a man but less than a woman]. This is the first time that a claim for social recognition as a homosexual is made clear through/by the gay protagonist. This plea will eventually be brought to the foreground of hetero-masculine discursive practices in the film when the two

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gay protagonists mock passing as straight. What is interesting here is not only the fact that the gay character still claims some kind of feminine allegiance, but also that he sees his sexuality as superior to normative masculine heterosexuality; furthermore, by the end of the film Olaf understands that the revolution and social changes he is fighting for must also denounce the oppression of those individuals whose external appearance or behaviour may not correspond to prescribed heterosexuality. This scene also resonates with the discussion that Diego and David have in Fresa about the former’s socio-sexual behaviour and its apparently dissonant relationship to political activism. However, unlike Fresa’s Diego, the gay characters in this film never have to defeminise or tone down their campness in order to be regarded as equals by the heterosexual protagonist. In Hombre, Olaf ’s heterosexual masculinity is not necessarily questioned by him passing as gay in order to save his life (he is being persecuted for political activism), but more so through the relationship between sexual identity and the performance of gender through the gendered body. As the film progresses, Olaf becomes more aware of the kind of social and sexual negotiations that homosexual subjects must undergo in order to circulate and be tolerated within hetero-repressive contexts without fear of violent discrimination. By passing as gay, Olaf realises that the maricón is a wounded body, following Diana Paleversicvh’s work on Pedro Lemebel (2002), in which the effeminate homosexual separates himself from society by depicting a behaviour that is deemed destabilising to prescribed heteronormativity. Olaf ’s physical transformation also brings with it a psychological transformation, as he realises that the rigidity of sexuality that governs bodies within heteronormative society is parallel to the kind of exclusion that guerrillero bodies face when they oppose a different kind of normativity (in this case governmental). To some extent, Olaf and Telmo’s bodies can be regarded as equally vulnerable because they represent non-combatant men (Jones, 2006) – both have had to rescind from participating in any kind of politics, the former to escape repression and the latter through his desire to

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remain uninvolved in the national struggle – and so their bodies are excluded from normative discourses. The questioning of the naturalness of sexual roles according to the performance of gender reaches its climax in the sequence in which the two protagonists tango together. Even though Olaf has on many occasions rejected and questioned Telmo for his lack of masculine behaviour, it is the latter who leads the dance. As Diana Taylor suggests, “tango, danced first by men, then by men and women, both re-enacted and parodied the macho attitude of dominance over the feminized other, male or female” (1997: 41). In this sequence, shot against the backdrop of the military repression during the Argentinean Junta, the two men finally share a moment of intimacy in which their socio-sexual behaviour (or role during the dance) is no longer dictated by their biological bodies. It is clear, at this point, that Olaf finally regards Telmo as a real man and his perception of the man’s gendered self goes beyond the portrayal of sexuality offered by the subject. Tango becomes the best instrument with which to visually acknowledge the marrying of ideologies that have been seen to repel one another, since this dance has always been associated with homoerotic desire (Tobin, 1998). Telmo and Olaf tangoing indicates an awareness of both men’s masculinities (gay and heterosexual) since, as Jeffrey Tobin argues, “the tango couple is composed of two masculine subjects, even if one – or both of them – happens to be a woman” (83). It is clear that at the heart of tango dancing there is a strong performance of masculinity and the masculine imaginary, even if one of the two male dancers may be considered more feminine that the other. The tango dance between Telmo and Olaf becomes a way of integrating notions of political commitment (Olaf understands that some of the beliefs at the core of left-wing activism are discriminatory and homophobic) and sexual equality (recognising that Telmo’s homosexuality is not a threat to the stability or correct functioning of the political order). Similarly, there is another sequence in the film where the two main gay characters, through their own performance of gender, question and make fun of the hetero-socially assumed naturalness

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of men’s heteromasculine behaviour. Judith Butler has argued (1993, 1997) that the performance of heterosexual masculinity is not merely the act of reproducing a set of specific norms and behaviours that construct a socially adjusted individual, but rather that the performance of heteromasculinity both enables and constitutes the subject within a given society. In this key sequence, the two gay protagonists demonstrate the degree of malleability and adaptability in the performance of gender. As Norberto (Dady Brieva) arrives at Telmo’s, the two begin a conversation whereby not only their behaviour (camp and flamboyant), but also their speech, is marked by a conscious intention to self-reference and address each other in the feminine with phrases such as; vos tas divina, estás rara, tas linda, que resentida que es [you look divine, you’re being weird, you look gorgeous, she’s so resentful7] (the latter in relation to their friend Marcelo). It could be argued that this type of speech does not necessarily indicate a desire to be read as women, but rather it is utilised as a strategy that seeks to de-stabilise the heterosexual normative order. Up to this point, nothing in their performance of homosexuality departs from those depictions offered in the films previously analysed. However, once the two friends reach the entrance of Telmo’s home (as Norberto is about to leave), they notice Telmo’s neighbour, Don Peralta (Juan Acosta), sweeping the entrance to his house. It is at this point that the two gay men decide, in a clear act of defiance of the heteronormative order (represented by the neighbour in the film), to show that male heterosexual behaviour is socially constructed and is as artificial as camp homosexuality. Knowing that the neighbour is within earshot, the two gays change the tone of their conversation even though, at the very moment the two men reach the doorway, Norberto accuses Telmo of being “aburrida”. Once at the door, they deepen their voices to sound more masculine and use a vocabulary that would be socially regarded as proto-macho (Archetti, 1999); ese es pura matufia, un día va a terminar con los porotos en el culo [he’s a bastard, he’s gonna end up fucked up], all the while addressing each other as usted8. Furthermore, as Don

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Peralta’s daughter (Natalia Malmoria) appears on the doorstep, Telmo leans provocatively against the wall in a macho pose and says to her in a butch voice “hola preciosa” [hey baby]. This time his macho performance, in conjunction with its accompanying performative speech, demonstrates that the body is not a static signifier as authors such as Butler, Whiteley (1997), Johansson (2003), Foster (1997) among others have pointed out, and that it acquires meaning not only by what it is by nature (gender), what it portrays (socio-sexual behaviour), but also by the institutionalised system of power relations that operates in a given society that allows the individual to claim membership in the dominant group. As Dyer suggests, there is a “repertoire of signs, making visible the invisible, [as] the basis of any representation of […]9 people involving visual recognition, the requirement of recognisability in turn entail[ing] that of typicality” (2002a: 19). In other words, hetero-masculinity is recognisable from a repertoire of gestures, speech and behaviours that respond to the idea of macho masculinity that is embedded in the social imaginary. Hombre does not try to suggest that either Telmo or Norberto is actively seeking affiliation to heteronormativity; however their performance of macho behaviour demonstrates that gender is, as Butler argues, an identity tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior space through a stylized repetition of acts. The effect of gender is produced through the stylization of the body and, hence, must be understood as the mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements, and styles of various kinds constitute an illusion of an abiding gendered self (1999: 179).

Telmo and Norberto do not mimic hetero-masculine behaviour in order to pass as straight or gain acceptance in a hetero-macho milieu; for example, previous to the “doorstep” episode, the police have already been to Telmo’s home twice and each time he has acted in the same effeminate manner even around such figures of 49

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sexual and social repression. Instead, their only objective in their performance of gender is to annoy the neighbour by making fun of the very basis that constitutes heteromasculinity. What will ultimately annoy the neighbour is the fact that he cannot criticise the men’s behaviour because it adheres to the very same principles, on the surface at least, of his own heteromasculinity. This shows how the principles of heteromasculinity are contradictory because on the one hand they claim to be natural and innate and yet, on the other, heterosexual men have to ensure that their behaviour is in accordance with the imaginary gendered self that is supposedly natural and to avoid the loss of masculinity which they fear. Hopkins points out that, the gender category of men constructs its member around two conflicting characterizations of the essence of manhood. First, your masculinity (being a man) is natural and healthy and innate. But second, you must stay masculine – do not ever let your masculinity falter. So, although being a man is seen as a natural and automatic state of affairs for a certain anatomical makeup, masculinity is so valued, so valorized, so prized, and its loss such a terrible thing, that one must always guard against losing it (1998: 179).

As discussed previously, engaging in homosexual sex will not be detrimental to a real man’s masculinity, since the naturalness of Latin American male heterosexuality, or machismo, revolves around its performance. As a result, homosexuality is frowned upon because those people stigmatised as such offer a presentation of the self that does not correspond to the ideal macho image that is embedded in such societies. The film suggests that a macho image and its corresponding “active” behaviour will visually separate heterosexual men from gay men. The performance of heteromasculine sexuality is one of the many strategies of survival that heterosexual men must adopt in order to guarantee a space of recognition and acceptance within heteronormative society. In other words, as long as the gendered self is performed according to the prescribed notions 50

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of hetero-masculinity that circulate within different societies, gay individuals will not necessarily be subjected to oppression and discrimination. Therefore the performance and even masquerading of gender becomes a property of the body that safeguards straight men’s heterosexuality or at least their heterosexual persona. It could be suggested then that the depiction of a camp gendered self by the gay protagonists is their own way of claiming a space of recognition as individuals whose sexuality does not respond to the heteronormative order, in a society that discriminates against them.

Conclusion In the majority of gay Latin American fiction cinema that addresses homosexuality, although not necessarily made by gays for gays, the figure of the maricón as the ultimate form of gay typification is commonly employed either to pathologise or demonise this sexual orientation or to demonstrate the perils of going against (hetero)normativity (del Río 2003). Although it is clear that the social construction of homosexuality in Latin America cannot be regarded as a homogeneous experience, it is apparent that images of the gay male individual that circulate in the social imaginary (fuelled by literature and cinema) still favour the idea of the effeminate gay man as the encapsulation of Latin homosexuality. The maricón as a social figure within the continent is of key importance because his supposedly natural feminine nature is the one thing that separates him from other heterosexual men. He is regarded as a copy of femaleness in that he will be seen as weak, passive, hysterical and camp. Such attributes respond to the mainstream social construction of femininity that renders women, as well as effeminate homosexual men, as inferior in relation to “real” men. This idea echoes that of Christopher Pullen when he suggests, in his analysis of gay men in reality shows, that “the gay man, like the heterosexual woman (Mulvey, 1985), may be seen as subordinate to heterosexual male dominance” (2005: 216).10 There are other gay characters within the body of Latin American gay cinema that 51

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adhere to this type of representation. For instance, Javier Bardem’s interpretation of Reinaldo Arenas in Julian Schnabel’s Before Night Falls (USA, 2000) portrays the onscreen Reinaldo as a hyper feminine character (although in recorded interviews of the late Arenas11 his presentation of the self seems less camp or flamboyant). By the same token, in Enrique Daw’s Adios Roberto (Argentina, 1985) the depiction of homosexuality offered by Marcelo (Victor Laplace) portrays the gay man as an artificial subject, a product of his own creation and a site of gender ambivalence in which his effeminate mannerisms and flamboyant way of dressing do not suffice to render the character as gay; thus his performance of gayness is also accompanied by elements of the mise-en-scène that further stress his sexual orientation. Similarly, America Ortiz’s Otra historia de amor (Argentina, 1986) also shows a predilection for this type of stereotypical maricón as the sole response to Latin American homosexuality. Nonetheless, such texts constitute, as del Río rightly points out, “pasos del cine latinoamericano comercial por asumir una imagen fílmica –ciertamente cándida, incompleta y plagada de estereotipos e inconsecuencias – respecto a la vida homosexual en estos países” [steps that Latin American cinema takes to asume a filmic image – certainly candid, incomplete and plagued with stereotypes and inconsequences – in relation to homosexual life in these countries] (2008). It is clear that the films analysed in this chapter are paramount in contemporary Latin American gay cinema, since they may function as self-referential texts for both out and closeted gay subjects. However, it is evident that they respond to the views and anxieties of a heteronormative, machista culture and, as such, offer stereotypical images of homosexuality as essentially feminine. More recently, films such as Gonzalo Justiniano’s Lokas (Chile, 2007) or Alberto Lecchi’s Apariencias (Argentina, 2000), in which the heterosexual protagonists must pass as gay, further stress the idea of the inherent link between male homosexuality and a campness that translates into the figure of a caricaturesque and laughable maricón. In both films, homosexuality is once again constructed as artificial and

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elaborated through a series of elements that erase the naturalness of male heterosexuality. Similarly, the gay characters in Kiss and Fresa highlight their homosexuality not by their choice of sexual partners or the onscreen development of affective relationships with other men, but by wearing flamboyant clothes, dying their hair, sporting “girly” haircuts, employing overtly effeminate mannerisms and using anything to duplicate female fashion. Conversely, although in a film such as Hombre, the protagonists’ socio-sexual behaviour is seen as artificial, it argues the artificial construction of both hetero and homosexuality and intimates that sexual constructionism is not only symptomatic of those sexualities that are regarded as subversive in heteronormative societies. What all these characters are doing (gay or straight) is performing gender rather than performing sexuality. In reality the films do not appear to be too concerned with the characters’ sexuality, that is how they understand, assimilate, assume and construct their own socio-sexual persona. Instead, they are more preoccupied with how such characters play out a specific set of behaviours that are intrinsically associated with a specific gender. It would also be possible to argue that these films have somewhat failed in their attempt to question homophobia in the Latin American context, but it is clear that they all share in common the notion that, mediada[s] por las estrategias de omisión, por los circunloquios evasivos y por los lugares comunes impuestos por la cultura y por el poder dominante en los medios, la representación de la homosexualidad en el cine latinoamericano reciente adelanta paso a paso en la plena exhibición de la diversidad, aunque todavía no se enfrente al conformismo instituido a este respecto, ni se arreste con frecuencia a proponer el debido respeto por la singularidad [regulated by strategies of omission, by evasive narratives, and by the common places imposed by the culture and the dominant power of the media, the representation of homosexuality in Latin American cinema takes baby steps to exhibit diversity, even though it is still shaped by conformity and fails to propose the necessary respect for individuality] (del Río 2008).

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3

Unwritten on the Body An analysis of masculine-looking homosexuality As previously suggested machismo and masculinity have been historically regarded as one and the same in the Latin American cultural imaginary. Some theorists like Stevens (1965, 1973) and Romanucci-Ross (1973) extensively argued that machismo is the Latin American variant of patriarchal sexism, and that it is punitive towards any form of deviation from prescribed heteronormativity. However, whether machismo can be considered as an unequivocal expression of Latin American masculinity, or masculinity must be understood as a separate construct that rejects or challenges macho behaviour (Guttmann, 2006), it is beyond doubt that normative male heterosexuality relies heavily on the individual’s external behaviour, mannerisms and appearance as Bonvillain (1995), Balderston and Guy (1997), Connell (1997), Fuller (2003), Kaufman (1997), Kimmel (1997), Mirandé (1997), Viveros (2003) and Guttmann (2006) have all extensively argued. Homosexuality, on the other hand, has figured in the social imaginary as a sexual orientation that departs from any masculine traits and offers a rather feminine presentation of a sexual self. As de la Mora (2006), Carrillo (2003) and Quiroga (1997) among others have suggested, the self-figuration 55

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of the homosexual has been constructed upon the idea that all gay men are effeminate. In the social imaginary, fuelled mainly by the media and literature, the figure of the maricón is regarded as the ultimate form of gay typification. As suggested in the preceding chapter, this figure is commonly used to convey homosexuality as a pathological problem, or to present it as symptomatic of social misfit, and illustrate the dangers of going against heteronormativity. The maricón seems to have the core function of providing a visually economical means with which to acknowledge social inadequacy in machista societies. However, there are some forms of more masculine-looking homosexualities that are more problematic within machista society(ies), because their portrayal is not rendered as a caricature of the feminine. Homosexual subjects who do not engage with the effeminate reading of their own sexual persona, procure a sense of social unease with regard to the sexual role their bodies have assigned them in contrast to their inner sexual desires. Their impossible quest is to dematerialise their bodies (Butler, 1993: 150) from all the social expectations imposed by heteronormativity. Most of these subjects are fully aware that their homosexual tendencies are never to be displayed in public but instead are to be kept secret regardless of whether the individual engages in same-sex sex. Within the Latin American context, such individuals must adopt an entendido identity (Murray 1995: 189) so they can still engage in gay sex while portraying a macho image of their sexual and gendered selves. Some cultural products, such as the soap operas La vida en el espejo (Mexico, 1999), America (Brazil, 2005), La otra cara de la luna (Cuba, 2006) and Paraíso tropical (Brazil, 2007) have challenged entendido identity. However, even in these cases, the gay characters have not fulfilled or expressed their same-sex desires on screen, even when their homosexuality has been accepted as “normal”, since the depiction of such desires is still regarded as too threatening and de-stabilising towards hegemonic heteronormativity. Notions of sexuality in most patriarchal societies are associated with gender which, as Butler has suggested (1993, 1997), is linked

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to notions of performativity rather than sexual desire, since the individual’s sexual orientation will not be questioned as long as his external behaviour corresponds to the notions of normality, tacitly assumed as heterosexuality, that regulate such societies. However, it is clear that for most masculine-acting homosexuals,1 the decision to “assume” and subsequently portray a sexual behaviour, regulated by their gendered bodies, is not so much a personal decision but a social imposition in which the person simply reiterates the heteronormative norm. It is not being suggested that each gay individual is adopting a gendered identity “intentionally” but rather that he is forced, by the different spheres in which he moves, to perform a kind of gendered identity that would not contravene heteronormativity, and as Pronger suggests, “to avoid suffering in potentially homophobic settings [gay men] learn to pass as straight” (1993: 80). In other words, the individual’s biological gender will be seen as a determining factor in the way he is to behave in front of others, even if that behaviour does not correspond to the person’s self-perceived sexuality. Therefore, a gay man who wishes to pass as straight within Latino societies must be prepared not to show his emotions, any signs of sensitivity, and more importantly, any signs of effeminacy. As Murray (1995) and Montero (1996) point out, Latino society does not punish the attraction to people from one’s own sex, but punishes effeminate behaviour in men or masculine behaviour in women; in other words, it punishes any deviation from traditional male/female sexual roles. As a result, homosexuality pushes against the very pillars that support machismo because the desire for other men is socially constructed as the desire to be a woman. It does not matter if the macho seeks sex with other men as long as he projects a hypermasculine image of himself, since sexuality is determined by the degree of visibility to which the person’s sexual orientation is displayed. Masculine-acting gay men have, to some extent, become the sort of heterosexual man who, as Annick Prieur points out, “do[es] not have an opinion of what it means (to be heterosexual) […] a man is a man, or is normal, as long as he looks like a man and sticks to

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the active role, regardless of whether he has sex with women or men” (1996: 87). This chapter offers an analysis of a series of films in which homosexuality, or rather homosexual desires, are enacted from a space that guarantees hetero-social adequacy (known as the closet) in order to ensure that it does not pose a threat to the stability of the heteronormative, patriarchal, social order. The films chosen for analysis deal with and portray different aspects of non-effeminate, masculine-looking homosexuality. The discussion opens with an analysis of Jaime Humberto Hermosillo’s Doña Herlinda y su hijo (1985) and eXXXorcismos (2002), as both films deal effectively with notions of the closet as a space to safeguard homosexuality within macho society. Santiago Otheguy’s La León (2007) shows rural homosexuality and the kind of tacit negotiations that such forms of sexual exchanges must take in proto-macho environments. Barbet Schroeder’s La virgen de los sicarios (2000) deals with the idea of a normalised gay identity through violence and the laws of the sicariato. In short, the main concern of this chapter is to show various representations that have been created from forms of masculine-looking homosexuality, and whether they have been effective in promoting an understanding of non-effeminate images of homosexuality in the Latin American social imaginary, or have served to further ostracise non-effeminate homosexuals from the realm of gay (sub)culture. It is crucial to point out that the protagonists in such films cannot be regarded as macho gay, as theorised by Cole (2000), Dyer (2002, 2202a), Edwards (2006), Rudman and Glick (2008) inasmuch as they have viewed the articulation of macho gay identity, and its collective image, as a failed attempt at copying heterosexual investment. The heterosexualisation of the macho gay image fails to achieve its purpose because the stylisation of the very image that homosexual men regard as hypermasculine and virile produces an erotic effect that is absent in the heterosexual original. Conversely, Martin Levine and Michael Kimmel argue that the macho gay, “enacted a hypermasculine sexuality as a way to challenge their stigmatization as failed men” (1998: 5); however,

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it is clear that their own version of hypermasculine sexuality has produced a hypermasculine sexual code that seems artificial for heterosexual men. Instead, what is proposed in this chapter is an analysis of a set of films that deal with entendido identity. For the characters in these films, assuming an entendido identity becomes a performative act that must be carried out in order to be regarded as a “normal” individual within the heteronormative system. The entendido identity portrayed in these films is nothing but a mere reproduction of a hegemonic and heteronormative identity discourse, characteristic of most Latin American countries and based on the repetition of a set of behaviour(s) that constitutes a kind of institutionalised sexual normativity. Such an identity is subjected to a kind of regulated repetition, to evoke Butler (1993: 95 and 1997: 87), as the individual performs a dominant discourse in order to be accepted within heteronormative society.

There’s no place like the closet: Jaime Humberto Hermosillo’s Doña Herlinda y su hijo and eXXXorcismos The cinema of Jaime Humberto Hermosillo has become an important point of reference in contemporary Mexican society. The common denominator in Hermosillo’s filmography is his profound interest in dissecting the hypocrisy of the Mexican middle classes and analysing issues of the urban middle classes, to study sexuality and gender relations and portray the dislocation and rupture of the moral order. One of the most important characteristics of Hermosillo’s cinema is the inclusion and visual acknowledgement of a type of gay subject that had been rejected, or at least ignored, in mainstream macho society. This subject breaks with the stereotype of the joto/maricón as the only form of gay typification that is socially recognised within Mexican culture. In many of his films, gay characters play a lead role. However, these characters lack the high degree of effeminacy that has become associated with homosexuality in Latin American mainstream culture, as studied in detail in the previous chapter. Instead, for the first time in the history 59

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of Latin American cinema, Hermosillo presents gay characters, albeit most of them are read or portrayed as sexually ambivalent, whose physicality and external behaviour cannot confuse them with stereotypical maricones. From his very early work Hermosillo has shown a fascination with pushing the boundaries of socio-sexual relations in his native Mexico, especially the sort of negotiations that occur amongst men in a society that has always favoured the idea of machismo as the basis of hetero-masculine relations. Rather than portraying characters and situations that are openly gay or queer, he has chosen to confront Mexican society from positions that on the surface appear to safeguard heteronormativity even for those subjects who may identify as gay, or at least are sexually attracted to other men. Films such as El cumpleaños del perro (1974), Matinée (1976), and Las apariencias engañan (1978) are highly homoerotic in the way certain male characters interact, and yet their homosexual tendencies or preferences remain unexplored (and unexposed) to/ for the viewer. In such films, the endings are always ambiguous and although they may suggest that a homosexual relationship is taking place between the protagonists, this is never fully realised on screen. It could be suggested that the cinema of Hermosillo, the first openly gay director in Mexico, documents the trajectory of the GLBT struggle in his native Mexico. From the very ambiguous films of his early work, to the more direct and openly gay themes of his latest features, he presents audiences with what is arguably a fictional, and in many instances personal, historiography of the Mexican gay subculture. Undoubtedly, his cinema constitutes a step forward in the deconstruction of the abject stereotypes that the collective imaginary has assigned to homoerotic relationships. Doña Herlinda y su hijo and eXXXorcismos are very open in their treatment of homosexuality although they both address it from the closet, that is to say from an imaginary space inhabited by individuals who seek to actively hide their homosexuality from the vigilant eyes of heteronormative society. These two films show that the closet is, as Michael Brown claims, “a manifestation of heteronormative and homophobic powers in time-space, and moreover that this

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materiality mediates a power-knowledge of oppression” (2000: 03). The closet is a space that denies, conceals and erases same-sex desires in order to protect heteronormative hegemonic social structures from homosexual subversion. It is a construction that contains homosexuality, stopping it from spreading into the realm of heteronormative culture while allowing same-sex desire to be manifested without interfering with the politics of gender and sexuality within heteronormativity. In Doña Herlinda, Rodolfo (Marco Antonio Treviño) happily embraces the closet as a space in which he can enjoy all the benefits of his middle class position, his professional reputation (as a paediatrician, a career that for an out gay man might well be equated with pederasty) and full integration into machista society without fearing rejection or ostracism. However, in eXXXorcismo Marco Antonio/Roberto (Alberto Estrella) sees his closet as a space of sexual oppression that forces him to assume and depict a sexual identity that does not seem to reflect his true sexual desires. Although both characters could be regarded as offering two sides or versions of the same experience, it is clear that there has been a shift in the way Hermosillo understands the closet as a space of concealment for a man’s sexual orientation. While the Rodolfo character seems to advocate, and even protect, the very existence of the closet as “a location of resistance against oppression, a way of living out one’s homosexuality in times and places where openness was [is] not possible” (Eribon and Lucey 2004: 39), for the Marco Antonio/Roberto character the closet becomes as Eribon and Lucey suggest, “a symbol of shame, a submission to oppression” (39), since he must stay there to pass as straight and be accepted without discrimination within heteronormativity. This is also reflected in the way their bodies are depicted on screen and the kind of interactions that occur between their bodies and those of other people around them (who may not necessarily establish sexual relationships with them and yet affect the way such bodies respond to different socio-sexual stimuli). It could be argued that the way both characters are depicted on screen, and their discourse on the closet, responds to a very specific agenda that is directly related

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to the politics of (homo)sexuality at a specific time and questions established views on machismo. For instance, Doña Herlinda’s Rodolfo, with cowboy boots, moustache and hairy chest, is presented from the start of the film as the Mexican male archetype, as theorised by Mary-Lee Mulholland (2007), de la Mora (2006) and Mirandé (1997) among others; his personal appearance does very little to conceal his inscription within a national or even regional gender imagery (the film is set in Guadalajara). Although Rodolfo is not a charro [Mexican cowboy], he purposely embraces this kind of hyper-masculine image as a way to further conceal his homosexual tendencies. In the opening sequence of the film, Rodolfo is shown in a long shot walking towards the hospedaje [hostel] where his lover lives, allowing spectators to immediately identify in him those hyper-masculine features mentioned above. To further stress his macho masculinity, the scene cuts to a medium close shot of a man playing the horn. However, all that can be seen are his smooth legs and, from the way he is sitting, the fact that he seems to be wearing no underwear. As the camera starts to pan up, Ramón’s (Arturo Meza) body and face come into view and spectators realise that his features are more delicate than those of his lover and that his hair is fashionably long, distinguishing him from traditional stereotypical images of male Mexicanness in the popular imaginary. The diametrically opposed depictions of (homo) sexuality via the gendered and clothed body allow audiences to identify two almost oppositional types of homosexualities, the macho closeted homosexual versus the joto [faggot]. As Díaz Mendiburo asserts in his analysis of the film, Rodolfo refleja en primera instancia un aspecto muy viríl, el de un hombre muy macho que camina por la tierra de los charros de Jalisco […] La forma de asumir su homosexualidad comprende dos posturas que por momentos se mezclan. Por un lado está el Rodolfo-actor y por el otro, el Rodolfo-hombre enamorado [At first Rodolfo reflects a very virile image, that of a macho man who walks the land of the charros in Jalisco […] His way of assuming his homosexuality implies two postures that are at times intertwined. On the one hand there

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Rodolfo understands that a closeted homosexuality is the only viable option to avoid both the social sanctions that would be imposed on him if he were to assume an open homosexuality in macho society, and jeopardising his privileges as a member of the upper middle-class in Mexico. He understands that he must offer a macho image of himself to escape any kind of conflict provoked by his engagement in homosexual sex. The idea of the closet is conveyed more hyperbolically at the end of this sequence where the audience sees the two male protagonists reflected in the mirrors of Ramón’s own closet. A slightly high angled medium shot of the two-door, mirrored closet shows Rodolfo reflected on the left and Ramón on the right. Here, the closet has been made tangible by the director to acknowledge visually the metaphorical space that both characters inhabit. And although it is Ramón who tells his lover “ya no disimulas” [you don’t pretend anymore], it is he who will struggle to adapt to the various social and sexual demands that the closet imposes on him as its occupant. It seems contradictory that, when a neighbour interrupts their passionate kissing, Ramón is the one who expresses a homosexual panic, a fear of the feminisation of the macho image as either subject or object of desire, while his lover stays in bed. However, this is the only time that Ramón shows any signs of being aware or concerned with homosexual panic as otherwise he is depicted as the effeminate, passive partner who sees Rodolfo’s fiancée Olga (Leticia Lupercio) as a threat to his own homosexual relationship. In the film, Rodolfo embodies the only acceptable kind of homosexual manifestation in Mexico, because his homosexual desire is not openly shown through his external behaviour or apparent (public) choice of partner. As Antoine Rodríguez argues, the film

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is the Rodolfo-actor and, on the other, the Rodolfo-man in love] (2004: 106).

exhibe lo que la decencia clasemediera sólo puede aceptar silenciándolo, muestra cómo las normas heterosexuales engullen toda conducta marginal y deconstruye hábilmente, como veremos, los tópicos que

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desgraciadamente han nutrido -y siguen nutriendo- el imaginario colectivo acerca de las relaciones homoeróticas masculinas [it exhibits what the middle classes can only accept in silence, it shows how heterosexual laws overtake all marginal behaviours and deconstruct, as is clear, those subjects that have – and continue to – fuelled the collective imaginary in relation to homoerotic relations] (2005).

What is more interesting about Doña Herlinda is the way the film exposes, rather than questions, the pillars that sustain the basis of a closeted heteronormativity in which there is a clear differentiation and distinction of the two members of the closeted relationship. Alfredo Villanueva Collado, in his analysis of the constitution of the masculine subject in Latin American sexual fictions, argues that, cuando se encuentran parejas homosexuales, son descritas desde los parámetros de una asimetría social, económica, educacional y de edades. El miembro “dominante” de la pareja es generalmente mayor, mejor educado, socialmente prominente y de una clase social superior al miembro “pasivo” [homosexual couples are described from the parameters of a social, educational and age assymetry. The “dominant” member is generally older, better educated, more socially prominent and belongs to a social class superior to that of the “passive” member] (2007: 05).

The age and obvious social class gap between the two male characters provides an insight into how hierarchical relations are established within macho societies and how they are still, even within a tale of closeted homosexuality, to be followed in the construction of such narratives. The representation of Rodolfo’s body as hypermasculine is in keeping with the idea of a national masculine ideal, represented in the form of machismo. Rodolfo’s body conveys the idea of both visible (heterosexual) and invisible (homosexual) norms that govern bodies in such societies. The film places major emphasis on Rodolfo’s body as a sign that must shift between expected heterosexual 64

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behaviour and the homosexual behaviour he enjoys with his male lover. Hermosillo depicts Rodolfo’s body as proto-macho through his behaviour around the two main figures in the household. The scene where the three protagonists return to the house after doing some shopping relies heavily on the macho stereotype. As the three enter the house, shown by a long and slightly low angled shot of Doña Herlinda’s kitchen, Rodolfo immediately takes a can of beer from his bag and proceeds to sit down at the table to drink it while the two “female” figures busy themselves with putting the shopping away. As Guttmann asserts, in the Mexican social imaginary the image of the proletarian man (although this can be extended to other classes) with a bottle of tequila in his hand is a celebrated characteristic of Mexican men or hombres de verdad (2006: 173– 75). The image of Rodolfo, with beer can in hand, resonates with the stereotypical view of Mexican macho attitude. Throughout the film each instance of intimacy between the two male lovers is performed within a context whereby the homoerotic can pass acceptably as homosocial. Doña Herlinda herself plays a pivotal role in the staging of the homosexual-disguised-as-homosocial bonding between her son and his lover, since her presence serves to dissipate any doubts about the nature of the relationship of the two men. She even intervenes on her son’s behalf whenever there is any conflict or argument between the “gay couple”, usually driven by jealousy, that would reveal the true nature of their relationship. Furthermore, the instances of nakedness between the two men are usually disguised by homosocial interaction and portrayed as permissible because they occur in the safe environment of Doña Herlinda’s house and in contexts where male bodily contact is normalised. The shift from homosexual to homosocial is best exemplified in the scene where the two male lovers are on the patio working out together with the gym equipment (it is interesting to note that it is Doña Herlinda who encourages Ramón to work out with her son). In a long shot, the audience see Ramón doing some abdominal exercises while Rodolfo straddles his lover’s legs and kisses him each time he comes up from the bench. When Doña

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Herlinda appears from the background with some refreshments, Rodolfo “aprovecha su posición para darle masaje a RAMÓN en los pectorales, pues este tipo de contacto físico al igual que otros, en los deportes, en el trabajo o en las borracheras no son mal vistos, pues es algo característico de la camaradería” [takes advantage of his position to massage RAMON’s chest because this type of physical contact, which happens in sport, at work or in drunkeness, is not frowned upon since it is characteristic of male comradery] (Mendiburo 2004: 107).2 While Rodolfo insists on the broken continuum between homosexual and homosocial, the narrative in fact draws the homosocial back into the orbit of desire, of the potentially erotic, and in the way Sedgwick long ago suggested, “hypothesize[s] the potential unbrokenness of a continuum between homosocial and homosexual – a continuum whose visibility, for men, in our society is radically disrupted” (1995: 02). Their homosexual-turned-homosocial bodily contacts demonstrate that in Mexican culture, as David William Foster argues, “a continuum stretches from basic compadrismos [comradery] to the various manifestations of physical intimacy [so] there appears to be a level of male-perspective cultural production that models such opportunities without the aura of condemnation that customarily surrounds such narratives” (2003: 91). In the film, Hermosillo’s Rodolfo clearly demonstrates that the mayate (a figure that prevails in the country’s social imaginary whereby men engage in homosexual sex and consider themselves straight, as long as they take the active role during the sex act) is of key importance in the construction of male narratives in the country, in which men who have sex with other men do not necessarily see themselves as lesser machos as long as they procure an image of the self that corresponds to what is socially constructed as macho. On the other hand, Hermosillo’s 2002 feature eXXXorcismos could be regarded as a kind of follow up to Doña Herlinda. To some extent, this film has a more contemporary take on the issues first outlined in his earlier films, suggesting that the closet may no longer be regarded as a space that gays happily inhabit. This

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film could be interpreted as an attempt to show the concerns of more mature closeted men, who have spent a good part of their lives living a pretended heterosexuality in order to conform to patriarchal society, and who by now may feel frustrated at leading a life that was imposed on them by a patriarchal and machista society. As the title suggests, the film tries to exorcise the heterohegemonic ghosts that have haunted closeted men for decades, and that have forced them to portray a heterosexual façade in order to disguise their homosexual desires. The film is very direct in its criticism of the heterosexual paradigms that have governed in machista societies, and plays heavily on a set of iconographies that clearly convey the idea of redeeming homosexuality as a valid sexual orientation as opposed to normative heterosexuality. In this film, Hermosillo mixes two stylistic tendencies. On the one hand, the film is characterised by an abundance of long takes where the camera moves constantly around the actor and the mise-en-scène but concentrates on static shots for key monologues and dialogues. On the other hand, there is a stylistic use of the mise-en-scène where camerawork plays only a small part and the story is narrated as if giving a voice to the entire gay community. That is to say, he creates a type of aesthetics that the gay community can recognise as its own. Unlike his previous closeted gay protagonist, Marco Antonio/ Roberto realises by the end of the film that the closet is a space of sexual oppression that does not guarantee social integration. Without question, the film challenges the closet narrative as a safe space for same-sex desire while it promotes the construction of more explicitly erotic homosexual narratives through the protagonists’ bodies. The film suggests an implicit and almost unbreakable association between homosexuality and socio-sexual frustration; this is the first of Hermosillo’s work that shows gay men who are not “felices y realizados, ambiguos por su apariencia masculina o por su proceder femenino, seres que pueden mover a risa” [happy and fulfilled, ambiguous in their masculine appearance or their feminine behaviour, characters who move the audience to laughter] (del Río, 40). Unlike Doña Herlinda’s self-protective

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and hyper-macho protagonist, eXXXorcismo’s Roberto is resolute in his need to overcompensate for his homosexuality by becoming a “male impersonator”, as suggested by Shaun Cole in relation to the development of a masculine stereotype (2000: 126). On the other hand, the film clearly plays on the classic misogynist fears of the macho (Villanueva Collado 2007) by portraying Roberto as a penetrable (fuckable) subject. Hermosillo is not trying to feminise his male protagonist, but challenge the macho/penetrator versus maricón/penetrated paradigm that constitutes the basis of machismo in Latin America. The film presents a series of negative tropes associated with Roberto’s deceased lover Pedro (José Juan Meraz). He is both infantilised (in one scene he is naked and has a baby dummy in his mouth when he is talking to Roberto) and also shown as a vamp (in another he confronts and tries to seduce Roberto when naked and fully erect). Throughout the film, the character is presented as effeminate in his mannerisms and speech, but in sex it is the effeminate Pedro who will take an active role and fuck his lover. This reversal is prequelled by the kind of litany that Roberto recites while undressing as he prepares to offer himself as sacrifice to his lover. The camera shows Roberto stripping off through a continuous 360-degree pan of his body that ends with a full shot of him naked as he kneels on the floor. The protagonist’s body is ultimately presented as a vulnerable entity that must be penetrated in order to be dispossessed of its macho values. As Roberto kneels on the floor, the camera cuts to a close shot of his arm and the razor which is by his side, then proceeds to pan up to his face as he takes the razor and cuts his wrists open. During the pan up it is possible to see that he has hidden his genitalia between his legs (which now resembles a vagina). The hidden genitalia in conjunction with the bodily penetration caused by the razor serve to demasculinise him, an idea that is further accentuated as the camera cuts to a close-up of his erect bloody penis as he masturbates. The camera then goes out of focus and shows Pedro joining him as the two begin sexual intercourse. Still out of focus, the camera zooms out to show the two

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lovers during sex, to the point that it becomes hard to differentiate between them, and only comes into focus again momentarily to show that it is Pedro who is practicing fellatio and who ultimately fucks his lover from behind. Roberto is penetrated both by the razor and his lover’s penis and when the camera zooms in and onto the body of the two lovers, bringing it back into focus, it shows him fully erect and aroused as his lover comes in him. Even though this act could render him as feminine within the Latin American sexual paradigm, it challenges fixed notions of sexual determinism and roles, as assumed within heteronormative cultures. By becoming the recipient of his lover’s hombría (his semen), Roberto is finally stripped of all the macho values brought about by his closeted existence, without necessarily questioning his gay masculinity (evidenced by the fact that he is not an effeminate man). The fact that once Pedro has come he is then fucked by Roberto, does not in turn provide the latter with phallic empowerment, or help him recuperate his lost macho hombría, but neither does it reduce him to a feminisation of his persona or body. The re-visualisation of the erect penis challenges audiences to rethink anal pleasure as being essentially feminine, since Roberto never seems to change his masculine behaviour on the count that he enjoys being penetrated by his lover. As Susan Bordo (1997) suggests in her reading of the male body, for a male body to challenge heteronormativity (rather than re-inscribe it), it must not associate the role of penetrable male with subordinate status or be constructed as an act of submission to a master. The other clear confrontation between Roberto and his closeted (homo)sexuality occurs at the semiotic level of his body which is confronted, from the moment the sexual exorcism begins, with a gay imagery that seeks to challenge his alleged (hetero)sexuality. The typification of homosexuality, that which exists outside the closet, is recreated through the phantasmatic mise-en-scène that appears in the Pasaje Iturbide [Iturbide mini shopping area] where Roberto works as a watchman. Such mise-en-scène serves as an economic way to establish the character’s homosexuality. Hermosillo strips religious

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iconography of its sacred connotations and imposes homo-libidinal meaning to it, as in the scene where Roberto enters a shop lit with candles and full of religious images (virgins and saints as well as a headless Christ) shown in a long shot that pans left to the inside of the shop where a painting of a bare-chested Christ can be seen hanging at the back. Similarly, criticism of heterohegemonic institutions, as symbolised by the mannequins of a bride and groom followed by a shot showing some shelves with toys and dildos on them also subverts the values of heteronormativity (although it could be argued that such an image pathologises homosexuality as corrupting family values). This is all the more obvious from the over-the-shoulder shot of Roberto that shows another two mannequins, both male and positioned as if practicing fellatio on each other. As Francisco Sánchez points out, in the film “falos erectos, masturbaciones, cópula anal, todo se muestra, no se priva [Hermosillo] de nada” [erect penises, masturbation, anal sex, everything is shown, he shows it all] (2002: 134). All these different elements of mise-en-scène have the overt goal of resisting heteronormativity by exposing audiences to an array of gay images that seek to de-stabilise rigid notions of sexuality. More importantly, the masculine behaviour of the male protagonist resists the notion of the pluma (Villaamil, 2003) as inherent to homosexuality. Fernando Villaamil asserts that the “‘pluma’ es performativa, sus efectos sobre los implícitos de sentido común en torno al sexo y el género no son el fruto de una intencionalidad política, ni de una reflexión, sino un acto” [“pluma” is a performative act, its influence over those implied by general assumptions regarding sex and gender are not the product of a political intentionality, nor a reflection, but a simple act] (2003: 157). Roberto is fucked by a man with pluma, an act that automatically strips him of the position of phallic empowerment that is paramount in the construction of sexuality in a machista society, while it also challenges the penetrable woman/ maricón versus the impenetrable man duality that maintains the system of gender stereotypes.

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Blood is also used in the film to assert sexual kinship between the two main protagonists, and to visualise the rupture of the impenetrable macho narrative through bodily fluids emanating from Roberto’s body. The passing of blood and semen has been highly theorised as both a rite of passage in many indigenous cultures, and a way to assert kinship between male members of a specific society (Herdt, 1982; Read, 1984; Elliston, 1995; Sigal, 1997; Allen, 1998). The connection between blood and death is linked to the closeted protagonist’s sexuality and his desire to liberate himself from the oppressing macho closet. This is evident in the scene of the ritual undressing and the bloody masturbation previously analysed. Roberto symbolically uses his body fluids to fulfil the rite of passage he has embarked upon and to assume his homosexuality as a valid sexual orientation. This bloody exchange has the ontological function of the transformation, by ritual means, of the closeted man into an outed homosexual. At the same time he is made abject by the razor blade and his gay lover because he needs both to produce his own bodily fluids which serve as the instrument to seal such a rite. The penetrated male body is rendered abject because it reminds Roberto, as a closeted gay man, that his longing for penetration constructs him, in the heteronormative imaginary, as a feminised and penetrable man. He rejects such feelings because they transgress the supposed naturalness of his alleged heterosexuality. He is both repulsed by and attracted to his own penetrated body in ways that mirror Julia Kristeva’s famous theory of abjection (1982), since his body becomes both the locus of cultural discrimination and homophobia (machista rejection of homosexuality) and a site of repressed desires (closeted homosexuality). It could be suggested that in eXXXorcismos the protagonist must be made abject not so as to reaffirm or foster a higher degree of masculinity, but to destroy the obstacles that impede his self-realisation as a gay man. However, by constructing the out-of-the-closet narrative as a semiotic bloody experience, the director may have merely fuelled those narratives that see homosexuality as deviant and aberrant. It may be that the

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film’s clear intention to shock audiences has been counterproductive for the reception of the film, and as Rafael Aviña suggests, la capacidad de provocación se ha perdido, a pesar de los atrevimientos de un realizador que jamás se ha amedrentado ante la censura. Por ello, resulta significativo que este relato de fantasmas eróticos, erigido como una fantasía gay en plan de melodrama azotado, tienda precisamente a autolimitarse en sus imágenes sexuales [the capacity to be thought-provoking has been lost, in spite of the audacity of a filmmaker who has never let censorship get in his way. Thus, it is highly significant that this drama of erotic ghosts, erected as a gay fantasy disguised as melodrama, tends to self-limit its own sexual images] (2002: 08).

Dangerous liaisons: Constructing proto-macho gay Conversely, from the depiction of closeted homosexuality that Hermosillo’s work presents, very little has been theorised in relation to those homosexualities that are manifested through figures that are socially regarded as proto-macho. The idea of the proto-macho, which must not be confused with the gay macho theorised by Cole (2000) or Dyer (2002), evokes an image that, as Guttmann argues, “ha[s] become a form of calumny, shorthand term in social science and journalistic writing for labelling a host of negative male characteristics in cultures around the world” (2006: 26). The proto-macho, then, becomes the earliest form of machismo which in turn becomes a caricature of machismo itself by means of extreme reproduction of macho behaviour, and what Luís Alberto Thévenet describes in Sucedió en Villa Naranjo as “un ocioso, con síntomas de megalomanía. O de delirio sexual” [an idle man with symptoms of megalomania. Or a man with sexual delirious] (1970: 11). The notion of proto-macho(ismo) as a monolithic force is greatly embedded in popular culture as a way to guarantee the gender and sexual monopolisation of social structures that are dominated and controlled by hyper masculine men (machos). As David Abalos has pointed out, “men have monopolized all connections to those 72

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masculine archetypal forces that are useful for their dominance and in the process have limited both feminine and masculine archetypes that are not conducive to male domination” (2002: 08). Hector Carrillo also suggests that in today’s Mexico, “more men who are sexually attracted to men disclose their homosexuality yet retain their masculine identity” (2003: 351), something that could be said about experiences elsewhere in the continent. As a result, proto-macho shows a determination to foster an identity by means of imitation and repetition of archetypal macho behaviours (Guttmann, 2006; Girman, 2004). Such proto-macho behaviour tends to be present more amongst the lower classes, since these individuals have not had the opportunity to experience homosexuality as practiced in other global queer communities. As a result, those individuals who do not have the economic means to afford such experiences, construct their own (homo)sexuality, continuing to base it on the kind of sexual parameters that regulate gender and sexuality for heterosexual people. Hence, for men who operate in certain proto-macho environments, assuming an open homosexual identity is to deny a masculine quality that is not only inherent but also fundamental to the construction of their socio-sexual identities. Santiago Otheguy’s La León (2007) places homosexuality within a context that has traditionally been understood as proto-macho. The director takes the story to the Parana Delta in Argentina where Álvaro (Jorge Román) becomes the kind of character that challenges the audience’s preconceptions of rural masculinity. It is important to distinguish between the kind of fictional narratives that have been formulated in relation to gay rurality in Anglo-European and Latin American societies. Whereas in the Anglo-European imaginary the countryside has been regarded as a space of liberation where men can escape the inquisitive and accusatory eyes of heteropatriarchy and consummate their “forbidden” love (Bell and Valentine, 1995), el campo [the countryside] has been constructed in Latin American narratives as a space to strengthen and reaffirm masculinity and macho power and to oppress homosexual tendencies (O’Bryen, 2008). In this remote area of Argentina the protagonist lives a

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lonely and simple life, harvesting reeds and fishing. For heterosexual audiences, the director presents the protagonist in a context where the idea of control over the land and/or the environment is paramount in the construction of a masculinity pre-conceived as essentially heterosexual. The countryside is largely regarded as a hypermasculine space, in which domination over the land and its products is a direct reflection of a man’s masculinity. As Paul Cloke argues, “wild rural spaces become seen as male spaces, places for masculinized adventure which conflate a cultural mastery of nature with particular practices of exploration and adventure in which boys and men can perform brave feats to confirm and reconfirm their masculinity” (2005: 52). In such rural narratives, the only form of interaction between men is manual work, comradery (sports or drinking) and violence. The countryside is not a space in which other bodily interactions are permissible for real men and, as Alfredo Villanueva Collado suggests, “el hombre macho prefiere la compañía de otros machos, pero nada más que hasta cierto punto. Dado el código sexual operante, cada intento de acercamiento emocional entre hombres machos lleva inevitablemente a la confrontación violenta, aún a la muerte” [a macho man prefers the company of other macho men, although only to a relative extent. As a result of the reigning sexual codes, every attempt of emotional closeness between macho men provoques a violent confrontation, even death] (2007: 04). Otheguy’s version of rural life in Argentina also departs from two of the most important and influential masculine narratives in the country: the notions of civilización y barbarie [civilisation and barbarism] and the notion of the gaucho [Argentinian cowboy]. Argentinean indigenous people and countrymen have long been regarded as being in a position of subordination and inferiority to city men, since the latter claim to possess a degree of civilization that is absent from such “barbaric” individuals. The rhetorical figure “civilización y barbarie” has been challenged and re-examined ever since the publication of Sarmiento’s Facundo: Civilización y Barbarie (1924) in which all aspects of rural life are demonised

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and troped as the negative Other in the country’s social imaginary (Alonso, 1989; Fernández Retamar, 1989; Neyret, 2003). The countryside is associated with violence and brutality and an array of negative narratives, that only serve to propitiate a rejection of the country’s rural past, embedded in the figure of the gaucho. Such negative connotations are nowadays regarded as reductionist and the figure of the gaucho has been re-appropriated as a national symbol of pride and masculinity. As Gustavo Geirola argues, “the political emblematization of the gaucho [has been] transformed into a symbol of national affirmation and machismo, but also [into] the socioeconomic controversies that divide the ideologies of the diverse binary equations of Argentine historical development” (1996: 316). Accordingly, gauchos have enjoyed a privileged position in cinematic narratives in Argentina, where they are commonly depicted as heroes “quienes dedican la totalidad de su itinerario narrativo a la concreción de la pareja y/o a la derrota del villano en cuestión” [who dedicate their entire narrative itinerary to the consumation of a relationship and to defeat the villain] (Lusnich 2007: 125). Similar to the kind of machismo in Martin Fierro3 (regarded as the quintessential gaucho figure), other gaucho narratives are characterised by a feminisation of the megalopolis and an exaltation of the masculine, wild nature attached to the rural life and values (Lehman 2005). Although Geirola (1996) argues that Fierro clearly exposes instances of homoerotic desire, this desire must be expressed violently because machismo as a masculine force does not permit any other kind of manly interactions. On the other hand, global gay audiences will soon notice that the kinds of stereotypes usually associated with rural gay life are also quickly disavowed by the type of rural depiction offered by Otheguy. For instance, Woods (1997) points out that, in many works of fiction, the landscape has been utilised as a metaphor for gay physicality and love, while others have used the image of wilderness and countryside as a setting for homosexual dramas (Bell and Valentine 1995). Similarly, Byrne Fone (1983) points out that the countryside presents three different assertions in gay

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popular imaginary. Firstly, it becomes a space in which it is safe to be gay, since it provides a clear separation from heteropatriarchal, urban society and the laws that impede and sanction same-sex relationships. Secondly, it allows the presence of homosexuality, or at least the homoerotic, in texts where homosexuality would not normally be directly addressed and, thirdly, it provides a metaphor for certain spiritual values. The countryside is viewed as a space for (homo)sexual liberation and empowerment. Finally, it is important to point out how pornographic representations of the farmhand have, in the gay social imaginary, fuelled a relationship between the rural land and lifestyle, and masculine prowess (Mercer, 2003). So, whereas national Argentinean narratives have shifted from a clear loathing to reappropriation of the gaucho figure as a national symbol of hombría, foreign narratives of rural life have romanticised the idea of wilderness and homosexuality as inherently interdependent. The way the main gay protagonist is presented in the film problematises the different readings of the rural gay man previously mentioned although, as will eventually be argued, his proto-macho, closeted co-protagonist does adhere to many of the stereotypes surrounding the macho campesino [peasant] image in popular culture. The director stresses the degree of self-perceived otherness felt by the main character who is obviously an outsider within this rural context. It is not his body that problematises him as a homosexual individual, since the way that this is depicted on screen does not contravene the conventions of masculine heteropatriarchy, but the way he always assumes a position of submission around other males. There is nothing in the protagonist’s demeanour or his physical appearance that could suggest a desire to attain a feminine condition. In fact, the one thing that his body seeks during the film is to challenge the social assumption that homosexuality and effeminacy are one and the same. He cannot be regarded as a maricón because he neither displays himself publicly as a woman nor shows any signs of effeminacy in his public behaviour; therefore his gender performance still adheres to what is socially constructed as manly. However, the character’s submission to El Turu’s (Daniel Valenzuela)

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macho masculinity, one that is expressed through aggressive behaviour and direct attacks to the protagonist’s masculinity, renders him as an unmasculine man. This submission to masculine power is evident throughout the film because El Turu invariably addresses Álvaro in a very authoritarian and brusque manner whilst the latter simply looks away from his gaze or responds timidly to his remarks. One such instance occurs when Álvaro arrives at the bar and El Turu, who is drinking with another man, shouts across to Álvaro “vos sos puto, ¿no?” [you’re a faggot, aren’t you?]. A long shot of Álvaro, leaning against the bar with his back turned to the camera, evidences his inability to react as El Turu continues, “es puto éste” [he’s a faggot], whilst the next shot-reverse-shot between El Turu and Álvaro’s back further stresses the protagonist’s submission to the insults. This constant confrontation between the two men shows that the film focuses on the various social and sexual transactions that occur between men, in this case masculine-looking ones, in order to establish hierarchical positions of male hegemony. La León must be read not only as a film that deals with homosexuality and homophobia, but more importantly “es una película de hombres, de hombres en el sentido masculino, y en todo lo que los hombres al crear esconden sus sentimientos […] es una película sobre las pulsiones, me parece, y represiones y como no aceptar las pulsiones del otro y discriminarlo cuando uno las siente en uno mismo” [it’s a film about men, about men in a masculine sense, and everything that men must hide about their own lives […] it is a film about feelings, I’d say, and about repression, and how to reject other men’s feelings when you feel them yourself] (Otheguy 2007). In this sense what makes Álvaro a socio-sexual Other, since it is not his depiction of sexuality that is ever questioned in the film but his otherness, is the fact that he does not exert macho power over other men around him. It could be argued that the kind of male hegemony exerted by El Turu derives from his position of wealthy superiority, as the only man with a prosperous business as well as the biggest boat in the region. The boat and the money have provided him with a phallic

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investment that belongs to the order of the symbolic by which manliness parallels success and material possessions. In the film there is a constant negotiation of masculinity through different stances of symbolic phallic investment and power, which eventually becomes the driver of the story. This negotiation of phallic investment is visually established from the moment both characters are presented together on the screen. The preamble to the introduction of the two protagonists uses the social significance of the phallus as a marker of a man’s hombría. As Álvaro and two other men sit at a table during the velatorio [funeral] of an unnamed man, the camera cuts from a medium shot of the three to an establishing shot through the window of the house that shows El Turu’s taxi boat, which emphasises how big it is, before cutting to a close-up of El Turu’s face and then a low angle, medium shot of Álvaro’s older and much smaller boat. It could be argued that Otheguy uses the boats to visualise the idea of the phallus and demonstrate that this is “a symbol [that] condenses the multiple significances of the whole configuration of male dominance, with its diverse social practices at once conferring power and authority on ‘men’, and giving most actual men some real power over the lives of others” (Segal 2001: 104). This idea evokes other male narratives in popular culture in which masculinity and power are represented through an objectification of the phallus. Both Toby Miller (2001) and Elizabeth Stephens (2007) also provide clear examples of the type of spectacularisation of the penis they note as phallic investment in media and filmic depictions of masculinities, and one which is noticeable in El Turu’s need to possess those objects that visibly and publicly acknowledge his manhood. These objects are regarded as markers of his masculine prowess and function as an extension of his penis, and by extension his own masculinity. However, by the end of the film, Otheguy challenges the supposedly intrinsic relationship between phallic object and masculine power, as demonstrated in one of the last sequences in the film when El Turu is murdered. After celebrating winning the local football tournament, El Turu stays behind to put the bar in

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order. Through a long shot of the bar, where the locals had been celebrating the night before and which is now partially flooded, spectators see him shifting a couple of tables and benches so he can place his newly-won football trophy on the shelf along with all his others. He observes a religious fervour towards the trophies, emphasised by the way the camera slowly zooms in on him to show how he sees them as visual markers of his virility and his masculinity; it is not coincidental that all the trophies are shaped liked pillars, which are essentially phallic. Once he places the trophy on the shelf, he takes some time to contemplate his phallic collection, by which time the camera has closed to a long medium shot of his body. This moment of phallic embodiment is truncated when the camera cuts to some misioneros arriving at the bar armed with a rifle, and follows with a shot reverse shot from the misioneros to El Turu and then back again to the moment one of the misioneros shoots him. It is important to stress that El Turu is not killed by the misioneros because he is a closeted homosexual, but because they resent the way he employs excessive macho behaviour. Interestingly, what begins as a moment of phallic confirmation (contemplation of his phallic trophies) ends as a moment of phallic disempowerment, since all the phallic power that El Turu has attained by portraying a macho attitude (visually confirmed through his trophies) has not saved him from dying at the hands of the misioneros. It could be further argued that his phallic disempowerment is instigated by his own penis when, the night before his killing, El Turu goes after Álvaro into the woods and eventually pins him face down to the ground, thrusting his body against Álvaro’s back. The close-up of the men’s faces as El Turu continues thrusting in fucking motions against the protagonist’s backside, in what is diegetically meant to be an act of humiliation towards Álvaro for being gay, shows the change in El Turu’s face as he evidently gets aroused by his actions but becomes increasingly anxious by the clear externalisation (his erect penis rubbed against Álvaro’s backside) of his own closeted gay desires. Counter-intuitively, Álvaro’s homosexuality does not necessarily pose a threat to his own persona. It is evident from the very

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beginning of the film that he has sex with other men, although arguably he does not subscribe to gay identity as understood in metropolitan Latin America. One of the first sequences in the film shows the kind of same-sex transactions that occur in this rural setting, and which reject the notion of the countryside as a liberating space where such desires flow freely. Instead, it shows how this is a repressive space in which homosexual desires must remain unspoken and disguised in order to be experienced, although other kinds of otherness, not necessarily queer, may also jeopardise the acceptance of the individual in the realm of such a society (as in Álvaro’s case). In this early sequence, a medium, low angle shot shows Álvaro in his boat as he passes a yacht. As the apparently wealthier man exchanges gazes with the protagonist, he stands up and walks around his yacht to follow the trajectory of Álvaro’s boat. The scene then cuts to a nocturnal short sequence where the two men’s bare-chested bodies are shown in medium shot as they make out in the woods. Interestingly, this is the only moment in which “explicit” same-sex desire is presented on screen and, from this point on, Álvaro’s homosexuality will be highlighted not physically (he looks very “masculine”, especially when naked), but through social attributes that are regarded as unmanly. In many ways, Álvaro’s otherness may remind audiences of Heath Ledger as Ennis Del Mar in Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain (2006), since Ennis’s actions can be seen as a “clunky closet metaphor” (Howard 2007: 100). What the film masterfully achieves is the production of a gay gaze that is not exclusive to and for gay audiences. Neither does it try to be, as Steven Drukman has argued in relation to gay icons, a gay gaze that “will necessarily generalise a universal gay male spectator to create a new position of interpretation, desire, meaning and subjectivity” (1995: 82). What the film achieves is instances of homoerotic desire that ask the audience to assimilate homoerotic images, as they are invited to identify with the gay character through his own gaze. Otheguy’s does this through a mid-tempo naturalism achieved with earthy black-and-white photography. What is also particularly interesting about the film is that the first

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time the audience is confronted with a gay gaze it comes from El Turu, the proto-macho character, who cannot take his eyes off the reflection of Álvaro’s naked body in the shower, as he combs his hair in the mirror. This scene establishes a clear distinction between homosocial and homosexual exchange, and stresses the degree of El Turu’s same-sex desire as he looks at Alvaro’s body. Prior to this scene, the two men are shown playing football in a medium close-up that lets viewers clearly see the way El Turu grabs Álvaro’s shirtless torso as he defends the goal area. As a result, this moment of clear homosocial bonding makes the subsequent instance of gay gazing all the more challenging, since it shows a moment of permissible male bodily contact transformed into an instance of homosexual desire. The other moment of gay gazing occurs when Álvaro begins working with the misioneros and appears attracted to one of them, from the way he is seen looking at his body as they transport wood to the main camp. Later on, when the men are resting after work, the camera shows a very low-angled long shot of the man who is Álvaro’s object of desire, washing himself in the

Figure 4 Fragmented queer identities: El Turu (Daniel Valenzuela) checks Alvaro (Jorge Román) out in the changing rooms © Pablo Salomon 81

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river. The camera then cuts to a close-up of Álvaro’s crotch and bare midriff as he squats down to look at the man. There then follows a shot/reverse shot from Álvaro’s face to the man beckoning him to wash in the river, back to Álvaro shaking his head to indicate “no” and back again to the man dismissing Álvaro’s refusal. What occurs in this sequence is a non-affirmative queering of the gaze, in which the man is presented as the object of the gaze, but not from a feminine point of view or even an overt gay point of view, but from a space of closetry to safeguard the protagonist’s position in the micro society in which he has been incorporated. By the same token, Alexis (Anderson Ballesteros) and Wilmar (Juan David Restrepo), in Barbet Schroeder’s film version of Fernando Vallejo’s La virgen de los sicarios (2000), can be regarded as characters for whom the assumption and depiction of their own gay identity are conflated with a sicario identity that seems to protect them from any kind of heteronormative sexual ostracism. Although it could be argued that Germán Jaramillo’s interpretation of Vallejo does not fall into any of the stereotypes usually associated with the figure of the maricón, he is still presented as a character that possesses a camp sensibility that separates him from popular readings of the Latin American macho. His two teenage lovers, on the other hand, are much more problematic because they are at the crossroads of homosexuality, sicariato [hit man] and to certain degree male prostitution. What is at stake here is the construction of a (homo)sexual identity on the part of the teenage sicario who is fully aware of his sexual otherness, but also understands that his masculinity is reaffirmed by his actions and not by his choice of sexual partner. Both the film and the novel call for a re-evaluation of the idea of gay masculinity within the sicariato in which the choice of sexual partner and the degree of masculinity experienced and/or assumed by the individual are not necessarily related. Fredy Hernán Gómez Alcaraz and Carlos Iván García Suárez suggest that sicario masculinity is defined “through ‘courageous’ acts of violence” (2006: 106). As such, both Alexis and Wilmar respectively will not allow their (homo)sexuality to question their own hombría. Neither

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would it be possible to suggest that they do not consider themselves homosexuals (as is the case with the Mexican mayates); for instance, when Alexis and Fernando first meet and go to the cuarto de las mariposas (The Butterfly Room at Fernando’s friend-turned-pimp’s flat which serves as a space for sexual encounters between older men and young sicarios), Fernando asks where the mariposas are and Alexis promptly replies that they are the only mariposas in the room. What is interesting here is that Alexis not only reappropriates the pejorative term mariposas (faggot) to describe himself, but he also seems at ease labelling himself as such (even if in a pun) to describe his own gay identity, an idea that echoes that of Juan C. Ramos when he proposes that “yet another way of appropriating heteronormative language is to appropriate it and redefin[e] it by the act of subverting such language” (2005: 06). Although neither of the two men presents a feminised behaviour that would deem him to be a stereotypical maricón, it is clear that Alexis functions as the macho because he is the one who exercises

Figure 5 Moment of queer panic: El Turu (Daniel Valenzuela) gets “accidentally” aroused as he thrusts into Alvaro (Jorge Román) as a form of physical punishment © Pablo Salomon 83

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varying degrees of power over his older partner. The sequence in the cuarto de las mariposas provides Alexis with phallic empowerment in various ways. When the two men go into the bedroom Fernando asks his young companion to strip off and, although his behaviour is rather imposing, as the young boy does so his gun falls on the floor so he picks it up and uses it to cover his genitalia as he walks towards the bed and waits for his older lover. At this point, Schroeder makes it clear that the sicario’s manhood is activated by the phallic empowerment provided by his gun. Such phallic empowerment is found in other cinematic narratives in Latin America where the gun can be regarded as the instrument that actively activates the rite of passage from childhood to manhood as occurs in Hector Babenco’s Pixote where the main character “enter[s] the symbolic phallic order of manhood, as represented by the gun” (Shaw 2003: 156). Similarly, Yaron Peleg suggests that one of the main characters in Moshe Smilansky’s The Sons of Arabia (1934) “eroticizes his gun, the extension of his manhood, in what can be read as a displaced act of onanism that validates and intensifies his status as man and a warrior” (2005: 85). It is clear that in these narratives, the gun ceases to be a multipurpose instrument that assists in the performance of masculine tasks (oppression and/or death) and turns into a cultural symbol of masculinity4. Furthermore, as the two men start having sex, the camera cuts to their reflection in a mirror in which, through a series of camera fades, spectators catch a glimpse of their lovemaking that culminates with Alexis penetrating Fernando from behind. By doing so, Alexis reaffirms his status as a macho man, and as Foster observes the protagonist is “completely masculine and thoroughly observant of the codes of heterosexist masculinity” (2003: 75), yet without feeling the need to subscribe to heteromasculinity or macho heterosexuality. Other homoerotic moments in the film also serve to reaffirm the sicario(s)’s gay masculinity and the position of seeming inferiority that the older gay man assumes in the relationship. There is a moment of hyperbolic enactment of Alexis’s gay masculinity when he decides to shoot at the television which is broadcasting Cesar Gaviria5, who

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Fernando has already called a marica, in an address to the nation. Immediately after, he throws his stereo from the flat window, takes a swig of aguardiente from a bottle before going across to Fernando, tilting his head back and pouring the liquid slowly into his mouth in a soft porn clichéd way. Alexis therefore exerts his masculinity twice, first by shooting the television set (the penetration and extermination of a marica with his phallus) and then by passing and sharing what has somehow become his own body fluid and, as Foster earnestly argues, “this act is a ritualized displacement of the transference of primary bodily fluids (blood, semen, urine) that is typically going to take place in the sex act” (2003: 83). The last moment of homoerotic exchange between the protagonists sees Alexis (before his death) once again positioned in a space of macho hegemony where his mocking enactment of femininity is meant to further stress his own masculinity. When Fernando returns home alone he finds Alexis, who has just killed someone in the street, waiting for him with his jacket rolled up inside his T-shirt so he can impersonate a pregnant woman who was screaming at the scene of the murder. Alexis’s female emulation resonates with Lancaster’s (1997) theory about transvestism as phallic investment. Alexis, like Lancaster’s Guto, sees his female impersonation as a way to emphasise his own masculinity and mock gender difference as constructed in the popular imaginary. The two men, who are facing one another, start laughing and embrace as a close-up shows the young sicario kissing his lover. Once again the camera is telling the audience that it is Alexis who is in control and can orchestrate desire and gay intimacy between the two protagonists. It is clear that Alexis is more concerned with fitting into the sicario image and so his sexual identity becomes secondary in the construction of his persona; on the other hand, in contrast to most popular narratives of homosexual desire, the gay protagonist is not annihilated as a result of contravening the laws of hetero-hegemony. A final point in relation to Schroeder’s film is Fernando’s seemingly endless need to consume his younger lover’s masculinity. However, rather than consuming masculinity through sex or body contact, he consumes it through the violence arising from the numerous

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murders Alexis commits over the course of the film. In fact, the older gay protagonist goes through a process of desensitisation and seems, as the film progresses, less and less shocked by the acts of violence that he witnesses at the hands of either of his gay lovers. Fernando seems as hungry for violence as his lovers, with the only difference being that he excuses his blood lust by the fact that he is an external witness to the young macho’s violent actions. Once again, and perhaps unintentionally, both the author and the director establish an active versus passive and, to some extent, a feminine versus masculine, relationship between the two protagonists. As Aileen El-Kadi acutely proposes, A nivel privado, la relación erótica entre ambos está mediada por la violencia, una violencia que, sin embargo, no es doméstica, sino pública y criminal. No afecta en sí a los amantes, sino que éstos son los productores de la misma, y ésta repercute en la sociedad. Uno ejecuta los asesinatos, el otro los narra. Uno insinúa, el otro concede la voluntad de éste. Fernando llama a Alexis “mi portentosa máquina de matar” o “el Ángel exterminador” y en más de una ocasión manifiesta tanto su desprecio por los ciudadanos como sus ganas de eliminarlos [At a private level, the erotic relationship between both characters is mediated through violence, a violence that, however, is not domestic but public and criminal. It does not affect the lovers since they are the ones who execute it, whereas it has repercussions on society. One of them commits the murders, the other narrates them. One suggests murders, the other abides to his will. Fernando calls Alexis “mi portentous killing machine” or “the Exterminating Angel” and more than once he manifests both repulsion for everyday citizens and his desire to kill them] (2007).

It would be possible to go a step further and argue that the violence present, and performed, in the film does affect the couple since they seem to feed their relationship through it, and ultimately it is the only kind of penetration the audience sees on screen. Similar to eXXXorcismos, blood seems to be the main bodily fluid that seals the relationship between the two gay lovers, although at no point 86

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in the film is blood exchanged between the actual lovers. The fact that so many seemingly innocent people are killed evidences that, as Sandro Rodrigo de Barros suggests, “the representation of the sicario universe [is understood] as a domain where desire is one’s governing principle” (2005: 136). Oscar Osorio has already argued that “el sicario (Alexis/Wilmar) acompañado de su amante Fernando, atraviesa una ciudad salvaje asesinando sin razón y sin remordimientos a cuanta persona se le antoja. En este tránsito de la muerte se va tejiendo la historia de amor entre Fernando y el sicario (Alexis/Wilmar)” [the sicario (Alexis/Wilmar) accompanied by his lover Fernando, traverses a wild city murdering without logic or guilt whoever he feels like killing. In this transit of death, the love story between Fernando and the sicario (Alexis/ Wilmar) unravels] (2005: 134). Fernando acts as a quasi-passive witness to all the murders and his only function, at times, is to distract or confuse passersby about the real identity of the assassin. His inability to be the one who uses the gun to annihilate the many people who he regards as the cause of the problem of the social and political decay of his native Colombia, renders him as somehow feminine towards the young sicario. In short, Schroeder´s La virgen de los sicarios is a film that subverts many of the paradigms of Colombia’s macho society by offering a sicario with clear homosexual tendencies, or at least attraction, but whose masculinity is never questioned because this is measured through the gun/penis dichotomy and the violence this creates. As Ana Serra suggests, “[La virgen de los] Sicarios subvierte y al mismo tiempo refuerza los estereotipos de la violencia y la masculinidad, puesto que los protagonistas son homosexuales pero también operan con códigos a menudo ultramasculinos” [Sicarios subvert and reinforce the stereotypes of violence and masculinity, since the protagonists are gay but also operate with ultramasculine codes] (2002: 71)

Conclusion Masculine-acting homosexuality in Latin America has been acknowledged by some theorists (Parker, 1985; Mendès-Leite, 87

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1993; Cantú, 2000; Carrillo, 1999 and 2003); however a real theorisation of what it really means to be a masculine-acting gay, or as the Anglo-European counterparts would call “straight acting” gay, is yet to be fully realised. It is undeniable that in the Latin American popular imaginary, the rigid sexual binary of masculine versus feminine still serves as the point of departure for an understanding of (homo)sexuality. This position has also been shared by most films in Latin America which have helped reify the idea that male homosexuality is intrinsically feminine and that to engage in same-sex acts shows a willingness or desire to lose one’s masculinity (seen as masculine behaviour). In this light, the work of Mexican director Jaime Humberto Hermosillo is paramount in the understanding of a different kind of homosexuality, especially since he is the only Latin American director to depict this from his very early work to date. What Hermosillo’s work has achieved is a different type of narrative for male homosexuality in his native Mexico and by default Latin America. Although most of his films have intra-diegetically taken the closet as a point of departure, they have visually acknowledged the existence of a type of homosexual that had been denied recognition and visibility in popular culture. By the same token, the kind of filmic depiction of masculine homosexuality that is portrayed in Santiago Otheguy’s La León also sees rural homosexuality approached from the safe confines of what Ben Sifuentes-Jáuregui calls the Latin American closet (1997). Otheguy’s film addresses homosexuality from a rural perspective which in itself disavows the idea of homosexuality as symptomatic of urban culture and at the same time challenges notions of the countryside as inherently hetero-masculine. On the other hand, La virgen de los sicarios, problematises the idea of masculine homosexuality even further by naturalising, within the diegesis of the film, the homosexual relationship between the older letrado man and the young sicario. As Oscar Osorio states, in the film “no se trasluce la intención de discutir la validez del amor homosexual o sus peculiaridades genéricas; como tampoco el propósito de apologizar la violencia, o de condenarla” [it is clear

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the intention not to discuss the validity of homosexual love or its generic peculiarities, neither it is to criticise or condemn violence] (2005: 135). By way of conclusion, it would be pertinent to briefly mention some other films that deal with the different issues at stake in this chapter. Enrique Dawi’s Adios, Roberto (1985) is a key film in the body of gay cinema in the continent as it is one of the very first films to address quite openly issues of same-sex desire. Although the film is very vague in its analysis of the protagonist’s homosexual desires, it is also quick to challenge the idea of the feminised homosexual (although it does not reject it completely). The film acutely addresses the problems derived from the coming out process within a hetero-macho society and the way social institutions have reacted to out homosexuals6. Conversely, an Argentinean film that naturalised the homosexual relationship between two very masculine gays is Marcelo Piñeyro’s Plata quemada (2000). The film in some respects was groundbreaking for its more explicit portrayal of gay sex, its use of leading Hispanic actors (Leonardo Sbaraglia and Eduardo Noriega) to play the homosexual parts and the way in which “la imagen, apoyada en unos cuerpos de alto impacto visual, construye una atmósfera en la que el sexo se convierte en metáfora de libertad” [the film is supported by bodies of high visual impact that construct an atmosphere in which sex becomes a metaphor of freedom] (Alfeo Álvarez 2000: 146). This is one of the few films in which the gaze is redirected for the scopophilic pleasure of the gay audience by eroticising masculine bodies read as gay. Another such film, again starring a well-known actor who plays an openly gay character, is Sandra Werneck’s Amores Possíveis (2001). In this film, one of the different sides to Carlo (Murilo Benício) is his life as a gay man who lives with his male partner but also looks after his son from a previous heterosexual marriage. The film not only challenges the heterosexual family as a social entity, but also naturalises the relationship between two masculine-looking homosexuals. In the film there is a tendency to eroticise the protagonist’s semi-naked body and to avoid the caricature of the feminine offered in other gay

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films from Latin America. On the other hand, a film that deals with the idea of the closet, but this time from what could be called a mute closet gay story, is Puños Rosas (2004) by Beto Gomez which offers a tale of unspoken love between a mafia lord and a young boxer, but which is never fully realised on screen. At times the film resembles Ekachai Uekrongtham’s Beautiful boxer (2005) in terms of placing homosexuality (although as part of a transgender narrative for the latter) within the hyper-masculine world of boxing (kickboxing in the Thai film). This film is poignant because it challenges the idea of heteromasculinity by portraying a main character who falls into all the stereotypes of the vernacular macho, and yet he is prepared to leave both his wife and the mafia world he inhabits after falling for the young man. The film plays heavily on the melodramatic but this time female figures are left outside of the love/deception triangles, and it is the principal male characters who are entangled in these homoerotic dramas. The film is also the first to portray the different kinds of sexual transactions that occur in a Latin American jail and de-stereotypes the role of the loca vestida7 within this locus. In short, all these films are committed to depicting a type of homosexuality that has been largely denied by popular culture and the social imaginary, as they refuse the idea of the feminine as inherent to male same-sex desire. Instead they set out to challenge macho identity as the primordial trait of masculinity within the continent, whilst opening up a space for dialogue in relation to more masculine presentations of the self within gay identity. In all these films, the male body is re-inserted in a space of masculine libidinal transactions in which macho behaviour does not necessarily detract from the self-figuration of homosexual identity. In other words, the films challenge the politics of the male body as theorised in relation to Latin American masculinity, and redefine social expectations and cultural stereotypification of the homosexual figure in relation to the construction of sexual identities.

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4

Where Gay Meets Race Images of Indo-mestizo homosexuality in the work of Julián Hernández Since colonial times the Latin American social imaginary has favoured the idea of the hombre blanco [white man] as the encapsulation of the ideal type of Latin American individual. As Anibal Quijano rightly points out, “as time went by, the colonizers codified the phenotypic trait of the colonized as color, and they assumed it as the emblematic characteristic of racial category” (2000: 534). During the different processes of independence that occurred in Latin America during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the notion of race “made it possible, paradoxically, for mestizos and mulattoes – by identifying themselves with white elites as against Indians or black majorities – to accept theories that justified white domination over ‘colored’ populations” (Graham 1990: 01). Gaining independence from Europe did not guarantee the inclusion of such coloured minorities into society and, instead, it simply functioned as a way to transfer power from white European to white Creole or mestizo elites without including pre-Columbian aboriginal people or black people as part of the newly independent continent and its different social and political regulations. With time, the media also helped perpetuate this idea 91

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by associating images of aboriginals, blacks or simply non-white mestizos with inferior individuals, in spite of some rather isolated and short-lasting experiences that sought to vindicate the racial misconceptions associated with such groups. Nowadays, cinema and television (as well as other media to a lesser extent) have played a key role in sustaining such ideas by showing white or whiter mestizos as ideal racial types. It was rather to be expected that most ex-colonisers would still portray racial others (non European or American people) as individuals who did not possess the same level of development (in all areas of life) as they did. However, what seems more interesting is that the ex-colonies did not manage to eradicate such beliefs from the social imaginary, and instead assumed it as a given reality and, what is worse, as a social aspiration. Cinema has had a key role in asserting this ideology as it has played up the idea of racial separatism and (ab)use of racial stereotypes for its own benefit and agenda. For instance, filmic representations of racial Others relied, until fairly recently, on the troping of non-white bodies as derivations of animal or vegetal entities that have little to do with human nature (Shohat and Stam, 1994); whereas relatively recent depictions have opted for more socially-stereotyped images of non-white Latin American people such as the bandido, the male buffoon or the Latin lover (Berg, 2002). Unfortunately, Latin America’s own depictions of racial others have not helped to promote more normalising images of such groups, and instead have portrayed them only as third class citizens who belong to the lowest social status, usually unemployed or employed as manual labour (Zito Araújo, 2000), or as pseudo-divine entities who use their Indian or black ancestry in order to attain or conjure super natural powers or forces (Gruzinski, 2002). Such depictions have served to undermine aboriginal-looking (referred to as Indo-mestizo from this point on) and black Latin American people, whilst also perpetuating the idea of white(r) mestizo and white people as a superior race.

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Mexico, as well as many other Latin American countries, has traditionally been considered in the popular social imaginary as almost devoid of any form of racial discrimination. The Constitución Política de los Estados Mexicanos clearly states that “la Nación tiene una composición pluricultural sustentada originalmente en sus pueblos indígenas que son aquellos que descienden de poblaciones que habitaban en el territorio actual del país al iniciarse la colonización y que conservan sus propias instituciones sociales, económicas, culturales y políticas, o parte de ellas” [the nation has a multicultural makeup originally based on indigenous tribes, those that descend from populations that used to inhabit the country’s territory before colonisation and that preserve social, economic, cultural and political institutions] (2008: 01). Similarly, the 10th periodical report of State Parties in Mexico expresses that “the Government of Mexico opposes any form of discrimination, institutionalized or otherwise, as well as the new forms of discrimination, xenophobia and other forms of intolerance that have emerged in several parts of the world, particularly in the developed countries” (1994). As Ariel E. Dulitzky (2008) states, expressions such as “racial democracies”, “racial melting pots”, “racial harmony” among others are often utilised to describe the kind of racial integration that supposedly occurs here. Interestingly, what has occurred in Mexico, as well as many other parts of Latin America, is that the process of social, religious, economic and political acculturation that took place during the colonial period also brought with it a new ideal of physical beauty in the eyes of the non-white population that privileged “los rasgos greco-romanos del hombre occidental, si bien hasta cierto punto matizados – por conveniencias políticas – con atributos indígenas” [the Greco-Roman traits of the western man, although slightly nuanced – for political motivations – with aboriginal traits] (Bejar Navarro, 1994). In Mexico there is a widespread belief that racism and racial discrimination are practices that take place in other regions of the world. A quick look at representation(s)

WHERE GAY MEETS RACE

Mexican filmic images of queer Indo-mestizo identity

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of indios, quasi-indios and negros [Indian, mixed-raced and blacks] (Bejar Navarro, 1969) in the media clearly corroborates the fact that the country experiences a kind of mute and spatial racism. As has already been suggested, most Mexicans would deny that racism is a latent issue in the country and that it plays an important role in the process of national and regional identity construction, yet Jacqueline Fortes de Leff argues that “the majority of the Mexican population is mestizo. The Indian part of that identity tends to be denied and excluded from the mestizo self-image” (2002: 621). Although the idea of mexicanidad (Mexicanness) has always been rooted in the intrinsic notion of a racial multiculturalism, Kande Mutsaku Kamilamba (2000) argues that both blacks and Indians have been excluded from the political agenda of the Mexican government for many decades. This exclusion is not intended to be an overt reaction against such groups (driven by xenophobia or racism) but a way of denying that such problems actually exist in this society. The two most notorious waves of resurgent nationalism that have been experienced in Mexico in the twentieth century – the Mexican Revolution and the Zapatista Movements in the first quarter of the century, and the revolts led by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation in the last decades of the century – have also failed to provide racial minorities with a place of recognition either in the country’s social policy-making process or its social imaginary. Guillermo Bonfil Batalla affirms that “the clear and undeniable evidence of our Indian ancestry is a mirror in which we do not wish to see our own reflection” (1996: 18), thus most discourses on Mexican national identity have been characterised by a longing (perhaps rather romanticised) to reclaim the indigenous past alongside a clear rejection of one’s indigenous traits. The lack of aboriginal pride that is so latent in Mexico constitutes what Bonfil Batalla regards as the (ex)coloniser’s ultimate victory, “the colonized finally accepted internally the inferiority that the colonizers attributed to them, renounced their own identity, and assumed another and different one” (20). This collectively-sought distancing from their own ethnic past is what has characterised

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Mexican identity in the last century, and it is the reason why ethnic superiority is still embodied by white(r) or fairer skin. Nestor García Canclini observes that the media, especially cinema, played a key role in the formation of common stories of national as well as regional identity, and as such they “estructuraron el imaginario de la modernización desarrollista” [structured the imaginary of a developing modernisation] (1995: 1). García Canclini is right in observing the importance of visual images in the process of national identity in Mexico. It is through cinematic images that a sense of collective identity has been formed amongst Mexicans and that ideas of race, gender and class, among others, have circulated and been rooted in the country’s social imaginary. In Mexican popular culture, cinema has traditionally functioned as a tool for exalting national identity and reaffirming national values, including gender and sexuality. In terms of masculine values (filmic masculinity), cinema has played a pivotal role in perpetuating the notion of machismo and, as Sergio de la Mora suggests, the macho is regarded as “the quintessential virile image of post-revolutionary Mexican nation, embodied by the charro (cattle rancher), an image widely circulated through film, popular music (rancheras, mariachis), performance” (2006: 02). Other masculine figures appeared in the history of Mexican cinema that, although they may have tried to revise and even contest the idea of the white(r) macho, never offered an aboriginal alternative to such a racial ideal. Such actors have all borrowed (or rather used for the benefit of their star persona) elements of aboriginal Mexican culture, but have always made sure not to distance themselves too much from the white(r) mestizo ideal. On the other hand, those who look much more like a darker mestizo were always relegated to secondary roles or played unlikeable characters that would tacitly reaffirm the idea that such ethnic groups were inferior to the dominant whiter mestizo, as was the case with Ramón Valdés (Don Ramón in El Chavo). In Mexico, mainstream popular cinema (as well as experimental and even avant-garde cinema) has played an important role in the process of nation-building formation within popular

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culture. Race, religion, politics, economy and other key aspects of society are analysed and (re)evaluated in some way in most of the country’s features. What it signifies to be Mexican, and the kind of tribulations that this notion has endured over time, has been clearly documented in popular cinema (de la Garza, 2006), and so Mexicans’ social imaginary has been fostered through filmic images. Andrea Noble argues, “‘Mexicanness’ is understood not as a reified or static concept, but rather a dynamic and fluid construct closely linked to patterns and changes in cultural and historical developments” (2005: 03) and, as such, popular cinema has operated as one of the best vehicles to evidence and transmit to mainstream society the changes surrounding the idea of national identity. In recent mainstream Mexican cinema, the only other director besides Julián Hernández whose body of work has tended to centre on homoerotic or homosexual experiences is Jaime Humberto Hermosillo. As explained in the previous chapter, Hermosillo’s work is of primordial importance in Mexican cinema and the incipient body of queer Latin American cinema, since he has been consistent in including gay, bisexual and queer characters in most of his films. Although many of his films present rather explicit homoerotic undertones, and to date two have even centred on explicit gay storylines, his gay male characters always seem torn between what is morally acceptable in the eyes of Mexican heteronormative society and their own real (namely discovered) homosexual desires. Hermosillo’s characters seem to enjoy all the privileges of white(r), middle and upper class society but remain unfulfilled in terms of their own sexual desires. One of the most prominent characteristics of Hermosillo’s male protagonists, although not always considered, is the fact that they all have, as Díaz Mendiburo clearly points out in his analysis of the director’s work, “tez blanca” [white skin] (2003: 63, 67, 95), “tez palida” [fair skin] (81), “tez morena clara” [fair mixed-race skin] (112). Hermosillo seems to suggest that gay subculture in his native country, in terms of moderno or internacional gay identity (Murray and Arboleda, 1995), entendido (Murray and Arboleda, 1995; Subero, 2006) and closeted

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identity, is uni-ethnical and only experienced by non Indo-mestizo sections of the population. For him, gay men do not live but rather they suffer their homosexuality, and there is very little in his work that either normalises or de-stigmatises them because they are always depicted as individuals who must pay a high price (denial of their own sexual desires or identity, ostracism from society or even death) for choosing homosexuality over normative and prescribed heterosexuality. By complying with the socio-sexual expectations imposed by heteronormative society, such characters enjoy all the benefits that an ideal white(r) society has to offer heterosexual individuals.

Julián Hernández’s Indo-mestizo bodies The type of whiteness being described in this chapter must be understood as a social construct rather than solely as a racial trait, since whiteness is attributed to bodies as if it were a property of the body and as such it can be attained and (re)surfaced by the individual. It is the desire to be or appear white (imitation and/ or assumption of a lifestyle associated with a racial group) rather than having a skin colour that defines certain subjects in non-white environments. Dyer (1997) argues that whiteness is the one racial category that is tacitly omnipresent in most post-colonial societies because its power derives from the absence of referents to it as only one of the many categories of race. He points out that “the invisibility of whiteness as a racial position in white (which is to say dominant) discourse is of a piece with its ubiquity” (3). What makes whiteness more powerful is the fact that there is no need to speak about, flaunt or show it; whiteness is viewed as an inherent condition of racial superiority. Sara Ahmed (2006), following Dyer, also establishes a connection between whiteness and the absence of whiteness (and the longing to attain such a construct) in the eyes of racial Others. Whiteness becomes a racial aspiration for people who see themselves as inferior and see their lack (of whiteness) as a social handicap. She points out that, “we can consider how whiteness 97

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takes shape through the orientation toward others […] whiteness is invisible and unmarked, as the absent centre against which others appear only as deviant or as lines of deviation” (2006: 121). Diego Vigil and Felipe López (2004), following Angela Guillian (1976), argue that social mobility in Mexico is only achieved through a process of “whitening”, and that this whitening becomes a cultural conditioning obtained through education, as well as the constant vigilance about losing one’s indigenous traits whilst imitating those of the white superior Other. This interpretation of whiteness has also permeated Mexican gay identity, as well as other Latin American gay identities, because North American and European gay subcultural models have been copied as the only valid models of subcultural validation and socialisation. As Altman (1996) and Quijano (2000) suggest, the gay subcultural Western model has been assimilated and incorporated into gay subcultural practices in Mexico without any real mediation of the socio-cultural differences resulting from the members’ diverse backgrounds. As a result, whiteness (or the pursuit and attainment of a socially-constructed whiteness) is viewed as one of the intrinsic features of the gay subcultural establishment. Álvaro Sánchez Crispín and Álvaro López López provide a very insightful description of the profile of the average gay man in Mexico who participates actively in the ambiente [scene] and point out that “la mayoría era originaria de la ciudad de México […] Los gays urbanos entrevistados habían cursado en promedio dos años de enseñanza preparatoria y la mayoría ganaba un salario mensual de más de 500 dólares. Estos aspectos están por arriba del promedio para México en general y la capital en particular […] Todos los entrevistados salían a lugares gay al menos una vez al mes y gastaban hasta 33 dólares, lo cual es elevado para los estándares mexicanos” [most of them come from Mexico City […] What the urban gay men surveyed had in common was that when they had finished secondary school most of them earned over 500 dollars per month. These figures are much higher than the Mexican average and particularly the capital’s average] (2000: 08). This idea echoes that of Hector Carrillo who points out that those people who

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see themselves as active participants in the scene are very much influenced by the lives and experiences of gay people in the US and Europe whilst “locally, they reinterpret and recreate expressions of gay subculture in the USA [and surely Europe] that arrive through the social networks of homosexual people who travel or read US publications” (1999: 226). Thus, the kind of Indo-mestizo identity that the Mexican gay subculture imaginary rejects is not directly linked to racial traits but to the adherence to the racial heritage they want to distance themselves from. As a result, aboriginal people are excluded from the scene as long as they do not possess the economic resources to participate and afford what the ambiente has to offer, and in the meantime their skin colour and physiognomic features are a tacit reminder of the conditions of inferiority that the social imaginary repudiates. From this point of departure, the remainder of this chapter will focus on analysing Mexican director Julián Hernández’s first two full-length features Mil Nubes de paz cercan el cielo, amor, jamás acabarás de ser amor (2003) and El cielo dividido (2006). Hernández, like Hermosillo, is an openly gay film director and his work is a testimony to the anxieties, desires and general lives of gay men in contemporary Mexico. He regards his work as a space of dialogue in contemporary culture between heteropatriarchal, conservative sections of society and their queer counterparts. As he rightly claims, “hacer cine en México es un acto político, hacer cine en el que los protagonistas manifiesten una elección sexual distinta es un acto político, hacer cine que habla abiertamente sobre la sexualidad de sus personajes es un acto político. Creo entonces que en mí sin duda existe un ser político” [to make movies in Mexico is a political act, to make movies that speak openly about different sexual choices is a political act, to make movies that speak openly about the characters’ sexuality is a political act. Thus I believe that there is a political being in myself] (Hernández, 2008). This evidences that he is not only a film director, but is also committed to GLBT politics in his native country. His cinema distances itself from commercial features, as the director is more concerned

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with the aesthetic values of his films (evident in his desire to give priority to images over dialogue). His films are very personal; they deeply emphasise authorial expressivity and focus on the thoughts and dreams of the main characters, rather than presenting a clear, goal-driven story. One of the main and important characteristics of this filmmaker’s work is his filmic depictions of the Indo-mestizo (invariably dark-skinned and indigenous looking) gay man. Unlike any other director in Mexico (or even Latin America) who may have addressed homosexuality openly in his films, not only does Hernández seem interested in portraying characters whose physical traits do not subscribe to the white ideal portrayed and stressed by other filmic representations of homosexuality in his native country, but he also seems preoccupied with the sort of experiences that Indo-mestizo gay men go through in their attempt to participate in the different socio-sexual exchanges within this subculture. In Mil Nubes, shot entirely in black and white, Gerardo (Juan Carlos Ortuño), a seventeen-year-old boy walks around the streets of Mexico City trying to make sense of a letter left to him by a fleeting lover. He then encounters a number of people who all seem to have lost the ability to give and/or receive love, and who are incapable of providing him with the tenderness and love he longs for. El cielo recounts the story of the relationship between Gerardo (Miguel Angel Hoppe) and Jonás (Fernando Arroyo), and the way in which it disintegrates after Jonás falls for a guy he meets at a gay disco, whilst the dissolution of the relationship sees Gerardo drawn to Sergio (Alejandro Rojo) who has always been secretly in love with him. Almost wordlessly the film closely follows the inevitable disintegration of the relationship between the young couple and the emergence of a new relationship between Gerardo and Sergio through a series of different narrative points of view which shift between characters as well as the director’s own voiceover. Both films appear to have an autobiographic element, since Hernández has intimated that they try to answer his own experiences and perceptions in relation to men who form affective and sexual relationships with other men (CINEMANet 2007). They are also

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experimental in form as there is little dialogue and they place major emphasis on the visual image and imagery, as well as soundtrack. It is not surprising that Hernández has admitted that directors such as Reiner Fassbinder and Pier Paolo Pasolini have greatly influenced his work (Knox, 2006; Golem Producciones, 2003). In his films, he not only offers a filmic depiction of sexual minorities in his native Mexico, but also favours gay individuals who have been underrepresented in the corpus of Mexican queer cinema, in other words gay men whose Indo-mestizo heritage is clearly visible through their physiognomic features. Although Hernández’s works may not address issues concerning gay socialisation amongst Indo-mestizo queer and gay subjects and/or gay discrimination in today’s Mexico, they do provide the only depiction for those gay subjects who have suffered a double process of discrimination by both society at large (due to their sexual orientation) and their own subculture (due to their ethnic origin or social background). Hernández’s work presents gay characters who belong to an under-represented sector of the Mexican gay population, as his protagonists are clearly Indo-mestizo but with a darker or more aboriginal physiognomy. However, in his work, issues of ethnicity and racial discrimination are not the main drivers of the storylines, and nor is he trying to make a spectacle of ethnicity or exploit racial identity. He is simply acknowledging the fact that, if thirty per cent of the Mexican population is of Indo-mestizo origin, then their own gay experiences ought to be cinematically acknowledged and validated. Mil Nubes offered, for the first in Mexican history, la representación casi inédita en el cine latinoamericano, de un homosexual de origen indígena (o al menos mestizo) así como la sugerencia evidente entre la redoblada alteridad que implica esa condición cuando la manifiesta un hombre no blanco, desposeído, habitante de un barrio marginal, en un entorno absolutamente machista y estratificado en castas [the unusual representation of a gay man of Indian heritage (or at least mixed-raced), as well as the evident suggestion in relation to a double “otherness” that such a condition

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would imply when it is manifested by a non-white, poor, inhabitant of a shanty town, who is submerged in a machista environment that is also divided by casts] (del Río 2005: 66).

By the same token, Armond White’s review of El cielo in the New York Press pays particular attention to the ethnic physiognomic traits of one lead protagonist by describing Hoppe as “a nobly handsome Aztec with large lips and eyes” (2006: 2). For this critic, and as this book will show, it is clear that Hernández is interested in depicting a racial and ethnic Other through the performance of these young actors who, to some degree, reflect his own life experiences and the extent to which ethnicity aids, or becomes an obstacle to, gay affective relationships. However, it is not being suggested that ethnicity, or experiencing racism or any other form of racial discrimination, becomes the driving force for Hernández’s characters to interact with other men or establish affective or physical relations. As the director points out in interview with Roberto Ortíz and Carlos del Río (CINEMANet 2006) the films offer a context of solidarity in which the male protagonists’ main concern is their own relationships and not the impact these have on the people (or the society) around them. In other words, Hernández is not making films about gay relationships amongst those sectors of the population who experience prejudice (due to their ethnic origin or social status), but films about the multiple possibilities of gay relationships that could occur in a multi-ethnic society such as Mexico. The body, and all the different readings and interpretations that originate from it, are paramount in Hernández’s work because he relies on it to represent stories of Mexicanness that may not necessarily be part of his films’ diegesis. For instance, in Mil Nubes, the male body is utilised from the very beginning to encode stories of social, class and ethnic difference and struggle. The film opens with a medium shot of a white man sitting in a car (who viewers later learn is Gerardo’s sex client turned idealised love) that suddenly cuts into a low-angle close-up of Gerardo in near

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darkness. The fact that his head is bobbing up and down suggests he is performing oral sex on the other man. This scene not only presents the male protagonist as a poor gay man who prostitutes himself to make a living (suggested by the fact that the white man offers Gerardo some money), but also contrasts the ethnic origin of the two male figures (undoubtedly Indo-mestizo versus white). The hierarchical division between the two male figures is visually acknowledged because the physical background to each character already establishes a class separation, that is the client’s car versus Gerardo’s shantytown. Even though the film does not question, criticise, or challenge the ideas embedded in the hombre pobre mexicano [poor Mexican man] archetype, it is clear that Hernández still acknowledges the fact that the Indo-mestizo man represents the lower classes who do not enjoy the economic stability as other socio-economic groups. In a film that relies heavily on visuals to convey the particularities of the different characters, Gerardo’s obvious aboriginal ethnicity serves to further stress and visually complement his lower socio-economic background whilst functioning as the non-diegetic justification for living in poor conditions. Unlike the bodies of the male characters in Hernández’s second feature, Gerardo’s body is not eroticised in the same gaze-capturing way since the director, as he expressed in his interview in CINEMANet (2006), wanted to show the hostility encountered by such individuals (regardless of their sexual orientation) in certain machista outlets where their sexual identity would threaten the stability of the hetero-patriarchal order. This issue is thematically repeated in the film as Gerardo’s body is made abject by the various men he encounters (the different clients he picks up in the pool hall, the guy who beats him up beside the old construction site and even the college student he talks to briefly) who all see him as a receptacle of their own class, sexual anxieties and frustrations. The protagonist’s body is a site in which both social and moral prejudices and aberrant libidinous desires conflate. He rejects his ethnicity for being a sign of supposed inferiority, as well as his own (homo)sexuality which he considers transgressive

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Figure 6 Gerardo (Juan Carlos Ortuño) as the abject body © Mil Nubes Producciones

towards instituted heteronormative sexuality. Gerardo’s abject body could be then regarded as a locus that points to the hypocrisy that is evident in the wielding of the criteria according to which that which is rejected by civilized society – as animal/feminine/primitive-need, usefulness, ugliness – is precisely necessary in order for the pursuit of ideas of freedom, goodness, and beauty that transcend the merely animal and qualify as specifically human traits (Chanter 2008: 33).

The director’s ultimate intention, nonetheless, is to use the protagonist’s body as a vehicle to disarticulate racism and homophobia in the national popular imaginary. Thus Gerardo’s body functions as the mirror image on which negative preconceptions of ethnicity and sexuality are reflected in order to be disavowed. To achieve such disavowal at the level of the diegesis, Gerardo must suffer from, as Martha Judith Sánchez Gómez and Mary Goldsmith (2000: 68–70) suggest in their analysis of ethnic and gender identity in Mexico, 104

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a process of triple oppression as a result of his “condition” as a gay man in an inherently patriarchal society (gender oppression), because he belongs to an ethnic minority (ethnic oppression) and for belonging to an undermined and exploited sector of the population (class oppression). Gerardo’s body projects the drama of Mexican post-modernity as he is trying to integrate his own gay masculinity as well as his ethnic and social background into a coherent socio-sexual being. The film’s opening sequence helps understand this internal conflict as Gerardo’s bodily noises, which range from slurping during fellatio to retching when he is sick after performing it, and his body are used to stress his position as an inferior Other. On the one hand, the sounds conflate the act and its product with shame and humiliation. If shame is a social construction that ultimately binds the individual to a negative sense of being (Valente, 2005) whereby his/he is ashamed of his condition as an inferior Other (not necessarily his actions as such), then it is clear that Gerardo may not be ashamed of the fellatio he has just performed but rather of the fact that performing it reaffirms his self-assumed inferior status. At the same time, this scene enacts the drama of post-colonial struggle since it could be argued that Gerardo’s fellatio is symptomatic of his condition as an inferior social being. The white(r) superior client then makes Gerardo abject due to his ethnic and social background. However, his abjection should not be considered a characteristic intrinsic to his socio-sexual persona, but part of an ongoing process of identity formation in which he must reject his “inferior” mirror image in order to create a new space of socio-libidinous identity. In this light, it could be argued that both the film and its protagonist see abjection as “the movement by which the body and the psyche dispute and affirm identity, [that] it equally has important implications for reading a text, which can no longer be regarded as a depot of an assimilable meaning, but becomes the rather phantasmatic site of a series of negotiations and transmissions” (Houston Jones 2000: 14). Gerardo’s abjection derives from a sense of self-awareness that he lives outside the status

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quo of the hegemonic heteronormative symbolic order. His abject body repeatedly violates its own borders and disrupts the wish for physical self-control and social propriety because he believes that, ultimately, as an Indo-mestizo gay man he cannot aspire to a different state of being (away from social, economic, cultural, racial and sexual oppression). His body remains a metaphor for the process of attaining, and then retaining, a social body (an aspiration that is never realised in the film) that complies with the symbolic order (where the symbolic is regarded as the articulate social order). In the film, Gerardo’s sense of inferiority is stressed by the fact that having to perform fellatio on another man (a white(r) Other to further stress his inferiority) situates him as the object of a social negation in which, as Rita Felski suggest in her analysis of identity, shame and middle classes, “it [shame] has less to do with infractions of morality than with infractions of social codes and a consequent fear of exposure, embarrassment, and humiliation” (2000: 39). It is interesting that Hernández decided to show the film’s protagonist on screen for the first time after this shameful experience. The protagonist’s body is reduced to the lowest category of sexual and social citizenship because, as he turns towards his client and is fully illuminated by the streetlight above him, he is presented as a gay Indo-mestizo prostitute who then proceeds to highlight his state of degradation even further when he accepts but struggles (evident from the look on his face) to reach the handkerchief that his client, in an act of “selfless” generosity, has offered to him. This last part of the sequence emphasises Gerardo’s abjection as his face indicates a self-perceived and self-assumed distancing from what (and more importantly whom) he considers superior to his own ethnic and sexual self. Gerardo’s shameful facial expression follows Sedgwick and Frank who suggest that shame is registered in terms of the face, “by dropping his eyes, his eyelids, his head, and sometimes the whole upper part of his body, the individual calls a halt to looking at another person, particularly the other person’s face, and to the other person’s looking at him, particularly at his face” (1995: 134). This can be clearly evidenced by the way looks are exchanged between

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Gerardo and his client as the former (after being sick) continues to look down, thus revealing his self-disgust at being reminded that he represents everything that is socially constructed as negative in Mexican society, that is homosexuality and aboriginal heritage. He is made abject through an aesthetic transgression of the canonical categories of aesthetics because he stands against the paradigms of beauty that circulate in the cultural imaginary. It is evident that Hernández is rebelling against the conformity of cultural beauty ideals by centring the story on a body that disrupts conventional narratives of male aesthetics, that is to say the white(r) male regarded as an ideal type. In this scene, the way the client looks straight back at Gerardo is yet another sign of Gerard’s abjection as it is obvious that the client does not see the sex act as a shameful experience because, having played the active role in it, he has inscribed himself within mayate identity, from a position of racial superiority as a white(r) subject. In this scene, Hernández shows how middle and upper class Mexican society (embodied in the figure of the client), who are predominantly white(r) and economically solvent, abject sexual and ethnic Others by forcing them to acknowledge (in an act of self-realisation) what they are not, that is to say white(r) and/ or straight whilst they are also forced to assume the sexual and socio-economic gap as inherent to their own socio-sexual persona. Thus, Gerardo’s body becomes his worst enemy because it is the entity that imposes on him certain socio-cultural and sexual values that are associated, through stereotyping and racial discrimination, with his own ethnicity. His body externalises the paradox of the notion of Mexicanness that has dominated most contemporary political discourses in Mexican society, in which there is a conscious distancing from the aboriginal past whilst there is also a claim to recover such a heritage. In Mil Nubes Gerardo (and his body) is almost never regarded as an equal by any of the men he encounters in his journey of gay self-discovery. In fact, the only sequence in the film where he meets another Indo-mestizo with whom he could establish a sentimental relationship, sees Gerardo rejecting him the morning after they

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Figure 7 Susana (Salvador Alavarez) is rejected by Gerardo (Juan Carlos Ortuño) © Mil Nubes Producciones

sleep together. The protagonist’s internal conflict is best told by the camera. As he is seen leaving his one-night-stand’s flat, holding a piece of paper which the guy has scribbled his phone number on, the scene cuts to a high-angled wide shot of the building’s internal spiral staircase, offering a partial view of Gerardo’s descent and the moment when, as he reaches the second floor down, he discards the paper with the number. Gerardo’s willingness to reject the one person who seems interested in offering him the opportunity to explore a gay relationship is symptomatic of the hostility he has encountered as an Indo-mestizo in Mexico City and which, to a greater extent, has made him believe that the ideal to pursue is a white(r) gay subject. Gerardo is depicted as a social and sexual outcast because he lacks any kind of referent that contributes to his self-valorisation as an Indo-mestizo gay man. He is rejected by the different men he meets in the film because his body (his indigenous body) is associated with negative aspects of Latin society as it 108

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traditionally represents underdevelopment and backwardness. As Alicia Castellano Guerrero (2003: 38) has suggested, the different aboriginal peoples of Mexico have been the victims of a process of cultural and biological discrimination that have denied them social, political and cultural citizenship. This process of discrimination clearly explains the willingness that certain groups have shown to separate and distance themselves from any aboriginal readings of their own persona. Even when such individuals adopt certain aspects of the aboriginal culture, they make a point of stressing their non-indigenous background. As Guillermo Bonfil Batalla suggests, they achieve this “by permanently marking everything with an indelible ‘not Indian’ […] that which is Indian is omnipresent as everything one is not and does not want to be” (1996: 52). In Mexico, racial and ethnic separatism have been paramount in the construction of social identities in order to create and establish a hierarchical system that relates social, political and economic

Figure 8 Jorge (Manuel Grapain Zaquelarez) rejects Gerardo’s (Juan Carlos Ortuño) advances and is beaten up in the process © Mil Nubes Producciones 109

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evolution with ethnicity. The way Gerardo is presented on screen, via multiple high angles and extreme close-ups, only serves to stress his inferior socio-ethnic condition, as well as reflect him as a dispossessed and vulnerable character. By the same token, Gerardo is also rejected by Mexican gay subculture because his skin colour seems to go against the notion of assimilation (of the ideal white Western gay subject) as the perfect mechanism for subcultural integration and kinship. This assimilationist posture, in spite of its ethnocidal nature, has been presented in the whole of Mexican society not as racist but as progressive, even though its postulates have had major consequences for aboriginal groups because it portrays their ancestry and culture as unnecessary and retrograde. Since Mexican gay subculture has been re-created around foreign notions of gayness, as developed and constructed in the West, there has been no space for any gay aboriginal discourses emerging from such a subculture. In the film, Gerardo alienates himself from his socio-sexual surroundings because he refuses to embrace and/or utilise the strategies for socialisation and survival within Mexican gay subculture, or the strategies of disguise of the entendido identity (Arboleda and Murray, 1995; Subero, 2006). The lack of assimilation, or the disregard for such strategies, is clearly visible in the pool hall scenes (which seems to be the place where he picks prospective clients, some of whom later become lovers). What is interesting here is that Hernández offers a detailed account of the type of negotiations of identity that occur within this space, which define and distinguish clear male and, to some extent, macho socio-sexual subjects. The different exchanges that take place gives audiences some understanding of how male subjects (regardless of their sexual identity or sexual interests) must portray a type of masculinity that would not be considered as non-masculine by others. As Katie Willis suggests in her analysis of masculinities in urban Latin America, “within cities there are particular spaces, such as bars, that are understood as ‘male spaces’ within which certain forms of ‘masculine behaviour’ are acceptable and where women are often explicitly excluded” (2004: 99). The

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use of the word “women” does not necessarily apply only to females but could also include any kind of behaviour that is deemed as non-masculine. Gerardo does not enjoy a privileged position in this macho outlet. However his presence is still tolerated, as it would be with female prostitutes (Hubbard 1998, 2000), because he can offer sexual services to the mayate men who use this outlet as a way to engage in same-sex sex without the fear of their own (hetero) sexuality being questioned. This masculine space further makes Gerardo abject, both as a male prostitute and as an Indo-mestizo gay, since both his ethnicity and homosexuality do not fit with the idea of a white(r) macho body that enjoys a place of supremacy in the Mexican social imaginary. It could be argued that the type of hostility encountered by Gerardo is related to his sexual orientation rather than his ethnic body. Gerardo’s sexuality plays a pivotal part in the normal functioning of the pool hall as an outlet for same-sex exchanges in which men who do not consider themselves as gay can still participate in such transactions. Hernández makes it clear visually that it is Gerardo who becomes the passive recipient of the other men’s sexual desires because, when the audience first sees him in this environment, there is a shot/reverse shot of Gerardo and Bruno (Juan Carlos Torres) where the negotiation of sexual identity and sexual roles in the relationship is cleverly played out by the latter in a game of pool. First, the camera provides a close shot of Bruno’s face that cuts to a close-up of the back of Gerardo’s head before zooming in to an extreme close-up of his face as he turns to the left. As in the previous sequence, the way the two men exchange looks helps to highlight Gerardo’s abjection as he recognises that he is not at the same social or economic level as his prospective client. Whilst Bruno can look Gerardo straight in the eyes, Gerardo keeps his head slightly bowed, looking back in a more subservient fashion. As the sequence progresses the camera goes back to Bruno’s face, who is now smiling at Gerardo, and zooms out to a medium shot of him with the pool cue by his side (which functions as a phallic symbol of his male supremacy). The image then cuts to an extreme close-up of Bruno’s hand as

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he gets ready to hit the white ball after which the camera follows the ball which goes into the pocket, visually reflecting Gerardo’s position as the passive agent in this dynamic. Once the ball has been potted, the camera pans up quickly to Gerardo’s face as he looks around the pool hall and smiles at Bruno who is shown in a medium shot, supporting his body with the cue. This act further illustrates Bruno’s reliance on his penis (obliquely and visually represented by the cue) to establish power relations between himself and the film’s protagonist. The pool hall functions as the perfect homosocial setting where strong gay undertones are at play because all the elements of the mise-en-scène are evocative of the type of transactions that occur between gay and mayate men. The whole idea of men bending over, one with a cue in his hand (his penis) as he prepares to pocket the ball, and the other watching from the opposite end of the table, becoming the receptacle of the other’s manliness, embodies a cliché of (queer) global cinema that epitomises the penetrator versus penetrated dichotomy that remains paramount in the establishment and assumption of the mayate identity. However, what is consistent in this sequence, as well as many others in the film, is the hierarchical power relations between Gerardo and the men with whom he establishes sexual or affective relations. The protagonist’s attempts at establishing meaningful relationships with other men are always truncated by his ethnic body and its socially-assigned sense of inferiority. As Joel del Río comments, “significativamente, las relaciones sexuales o amorosas que establece el protagonista siempre se verifican con homosexuales que poseen un estatus ‘superior’ al suyo en términos de raza (son blancos), de clase, de apariencia (el fortachón que le tiende una emboscada y luego lo golpea salvajemente, o los machones del billar que se esconden a desplayar su clandestina concupiscencia)” [it is rather significant that the sexual and affective relationships established by the protagonist are always with gay men who posses a “superior” status in terms of race (they are white), class, appearance (the burly man who ambushes and assaults him, or the macho men in the pool hall who hide their sexual desires)]

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(2005: 66). There is no vindication of Gerardo’s sexuality or his social persona because he embodies many different repudiated aspects of Mexican society through his ethnic origin, class status and sexual orientation. However, Gerardo’s abject body could be said to work as an interpretative device that helps interrogate paradigms of sexuality and the fictional and visual representations of the male body in the Mexican popular imaginary. It achieves so by offering a break, or rupture, of the narrative storyline around which the sexual identities of the protagonists are organised (as evidenced by the contrast between mayate and gay identity). This is all the more evident through the impact that this rupture has on the audience, as it either encourages the heterosexual audience to become more self-reflective about their heterosexually privileged desires, or the gay audience to make an interpretation of their own notions and negotiations of oppression/liberation as a result of ethnic difference. Conversely, the type of representation that is offered in Hernández’s second feature could not be more different from that of his opera prima. In El cielo, Hernández again provides a depiction of the marginal gay Other, that is of darker and more aboriginal-looking gay men, but this time he avoids any negative readings that support the dichotomist relation whereby ethnic origin and poverty equals social exclusion, and provides a story in which the protagonist, in spite of his racial traits and origins, is represented as a valid sexual subject. Hernández decides to depict male homosexuality, this time not from the hostile terrain of the unprivileged classes (clase obrera or marginal) [working and poor class] but from the slightly more comfortable terrain of the middle classes (Gilbert 2005). In El cielo, Gerardo and Sergio are depicted as members of the former whilst Jonás is depicted as a member of the latter. Their socio-economic backgrounds can be easily recognised through the mise-en-scène of their homes. For instance, Gerardo still lives with his mother in a small tower block flat whose poor physical condition – there are various signs of decay, especially on the walls, and Gerardo’s cramped bedroom is cluttered with university posters and old childhood toys – clearly marks his humble status. On the

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other hand, Jonás lives on his own in a slightly plusher flat which is minimalistic and yet, artefacts such as the television, stereo and DVD player, function as clear signs of modernisation and economic wealth. This socio-economic difference is further stressed in an early scene as the camera pans back and forth a couple of times between the lovers in bed and Jonás’ hi-tech appliances. Arguably, the other aspect that separates the two homosexual experiences depicted by Hernández is closely related to the fact that in El cielo both Jonás and Gerardo are university students. In this film most of the action takes place in the Ciudad Universitaria of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), a location which lends itself to an idyllic, accepting and tolerant environment towards the protagonists’ sexual orientation and their love story. This is clearly different to films such as Francisco J Lombardi’s No se lo digas a nadie (1998) where the university environment was hostile to the male protagonist’s sexual orientation and so fostered his need for the

Figure 9 Gerardo (Miguel Angel Hope) and Jonás (Fernando Arroyo) enjoy an erotic moment © Mil Nubes Producciones 114

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closet as the only place where homosexual practices were safe and permissible. In conversation with CINEMANet (CINEMANet 2009), Hernández was quick to point out that the idealised version of gay romance that is portrayed in his second film does not necessarily relate to the reality of gay life in Mexico City. In contrast to Hernández’s first feature, El cielo is much more concerned with providing more “gay friendly” images of male homosexuality in Mexico City, as well as purposely casting men whose physical appearance is more in line with the idea of male beauty that circulates in such a society. In spite of statements to the contrary found on the blog page of the film that say, “generalmente el prototipo de Julián son tipos morenos, de espalda ancha, cabello hirsuto y cuerpo atlético compacto. Nada que ver con los guapos de comercial que dominan los casting. No en balde el director suele decir que él domina la discriminación, pero al revés” [In general, Julián’s casting prototype is a mixed-race man, with broad back, curly hair and a compact athletic body. Nothing like the handsome men from commercials who dominate castings. No wonder the director often says that he practices a form of counter discrimination] (elcielodividido.blogspot.com 2007), Hernández’s cast in El cielo cannot be considered as an attempt to break with mainstream parameters of male aesthetics or challenge mainstream conceptions of male beauty. Whereas Mil Nubes’ Gerardo was more of a cara chata (flat-faced like an Aztec statue that would remind the cinema connoisseur of Sergei Eisenstein’s 1936 Que viva México) type of Indo-mestizo gay, the three men that constitute the love triangle in El cielo are more attractive and handsome youngsters whose physicality responds to mainstream notions of male beauty as portrayed and circulated by the media. This aspect was quickly picked up by film reviewers such as Armond White who described the film in the following terms: “In Mexican filmmaker Julián Hernández’s Broken Sky, the lovers’ shimmering bodies – introduced in erotic intimacy – seem to burn from within. Is it the Indian-brown skin? The complexions roused to resemble fire?” (2006). Although this comment could be deemed exoticising (whilst clearly locating

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it as a Western critique), it cannot be denied that it highlights Hernández’s concern with a re-evaluation of the idea of male beauty that somehow remained unexplored in his previous film, whilst it also challenges mainstream conceptions of male beauty as circulated through Mexican media and the country’s social imaginary. Some critics (in the West) have responded very powerfully to the images of racialised male bodies that are portrayed in the film, and it could be argued that Hernández may have somehow exploited such racial images to sell out to foreign crowds. However, his characters do not fit in with the type of stereotypical representations of ethnic Latin minorities prevalent in Western cinema and television. Although Hernández seems to be aware of the impact that his “beautiful” male images have upon the audience, he does not seem interested in exploiting such images for the benefit and/or expectations of audiences (Western or otherwise) who expect this Latino racial other to behave in a macho manner1. This is best demonstrated by the fact that the most intense sex sequence in the film shows Gerardo and Jonás taking turns to play the active and passive roles during their lovemaking. By doing this, Hernández disavows the figure of the macho man that has been perpetuated by foreign media and cinema. By offering Indo-mestizo protagonists, he is also challenging some of the preconceptions that surround the idea of brown masculinities (Anaya, 2007), as symptomatic of a racially divided society in which mestizo identities are still regarded as inferior to the white ideal. Unfortunately, Hernández is too preoccupied with the idea of “evok[ing] the ever-shifting emotions of an all-consuming first love” (Thomas 2006) that he fails to offer a context in which his protagonists are allowed the opportunity to engage in the country’s productive apparatus either at university or in employment. Nonetheless, in El cielo Gerardo’s body best exemplifies and problematises social and class struggle for ethnic minorities and the challenges this body faces in order to gain social and ethnic adherence, since they do not necessarily want to be associated with lower-class or lower middle-class Indo-mestizos,

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but neither do they feel accepted by whiter-looking upper middle-class mestizos either. Gerardo’s features are finer and more delicate than those of Hernández’s previous film’s protagonist and the constant close-ups of his face clearly contribute to highlighting such attributes. However, the way he is depicted on screen, as a type of problematic hero(ine) who is struggling to come to terms with a non-reciprocated love, further problematises his integration into the world of the upper middle-classes since it shows him as weak and dependant, a recurrent theme in the mariana social imaginary. Gerardo seems to be presented as the stereotypical heroine of Mexican melodrama who is torn between two male figures who will go to any lengths to win her love. This type of representation of the queer male protagonist as quintessentially feminine (not because he behaves in a unmanly or feminine manner but because he does not exercise or impose power over the people around him) corresponds to the idea of queer intertextuality that Timothy McGovern (2003) establishes between the work of Luís Zapata and the tragic heroine of Mexican melodrama. Similar to Zapata’s texts, in El cielo “the classic heroine of melodrama becomes homosexual […] This queer reading and reworking of cinematic icons undermines and negates traditional gender constructs and the roles they imply” (137). In other words, Hernández presents him as a kind of (fe)male figure who is a victim of the way patriarchy regulates notions of gender and sexual conduct. Furthermore, the character’s onscreen presence fails to challenge notions of brown masculinity, or what could also be understood as gay macho (something that Sergio manages to achieve more effectively), and instead offers a queer reading of such notions. Although it is evident that Gerardo challenges the audiences’ gaze by diverting erotic attention to non-white(r) male bodies, he fails to use his body to challenge the self-assumed supremacy that non-aboriginal bodies have enjoyed in Mexican cinema and the media in general. On the one hand, Gerardo’s body challenges the Latin gay gaze, as such aboriginal and darker-skinned bodies have not traditionally been depicted as valid objects of desire on screen. On the other, his

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body also challenges the erotic exoticism of the Latin(o) gay male body that has been prevalent in Western cinema, where the dark body has been eroticised as a result of its difference. Either way, his body is presented as an alternative to the mainstream, white(r) ideal that has been perpetuated by national and international media. This character is clearly depicted like the traditional joto, as his refined physiognomy and his mannerism convey a feminine quality that is absent from the performances offered by the other two male characters. In a way, Gerardo becomes the gay version of the Malinche since he is portrayed as a feminine sexual Other who is torn between two types of more traditional masculinities: one that is representative of the white, European tradition and another that is representative of indigenous ancestry. As Merit Melhuus asserts in the analysis of ambiguous meanings of gender in the Mexican social imaginary, “Malinche has come to symbolize the conquest and the form of the ‘encounter’ between the Spanish invaders and the subjugated native populations” (2001: 236). Like Malinche, Gerardo offers himself to the superior white, represented by Jonás (whose body is not problematised as he is much whiter and more Mediterranean looking, and thus his inscription into the world of the upper middle-classes is regarded as natural and logical), only to end up feeling rejected and exchanged for another whiter-looking man. The parallel that can be constructed between Gerardo and Malinche “come[s] to represent the quintessence of Latin American mestizo origins. Couched in terms of violence, rape, suffering and deception, this origin is expressed through gender and race, articulating specific relations of power and dominance” (Melhuus and Stolen 1996: 237). Gerardo as a Malinche figure seems to spend the vast majority of the film sacrificing his happiness for the benefit of the other two male protagonists. He seeks redemption and atonement from the males who seem, at times, to pay very little attention to his desires. He is arguably depicted as a chingado [easy screw, because he allows the other two males to exercise power over him and constrain his own desires. Yet, unlike the Malinche, Gerardo will be able, by the

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end of the film, to vindicate his own sexual persona. He will break with the cycle of the drama of identification that depicts Malinche as both a national whore and a victimised figure. Hernández achieves the reversal of the power relations that are established through the two male figures in question as Gerardo becomes sentimentally involved (and eventually falls in love) with Sergio. Sergio, thus, vindicates the figure of the gay Indo-mestizo as the director shows him as a valid choice of partner within a gay relationship whilst his body is re-articulated through body ornamentation in discourses of post-modern identity. What is fascinating about Sergio is the fact that his body becomes a locus of multiple discourses of indigenous identity (like Gerardo his ethnic background is visually identifiable by his skin) and his inscription in post-modern gay subculture through the piercings that adorn his face. In The Location of Culture, Homi Bhabha explains that mimicry is one of the most important strategies of neo-colonial identity, as it shows a desire by the colonised subject to attain the

Figure 10 Sérgio’s (Alejandro Rojo) indo-mestizo body as Other in another erotic moment with Gerardo (Miguel Angel Hope) 119

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cultural conditions of the coloniser in his search to abandon his felt inferior status (1994: 125–131). Bhabha following Fanon (1986) suggests that, “mimicry is like camouflage, not a harmonization of repression of difference, but a form of resemblance, that differs from or defends presence by displaying it in part, metonymically” (1994: 128). Sergio becomes the perfect figure to encapsulate moderno or internacional identity in non-white bodies, as his body reflects the conflict of his indigenous background and his desire (which Hernández also portrays as a success) to become part of an international gay subcultural network. What is interesting about Sergio’s type of mimicry is that he utilises elements of primitive marking, that is piercings, that have been reappropriated by certain sectors of Western society in an attempt to distance themselves from some of the core values and principles (in this case beauty and physicality) of Western culture. However, such separations have not been entirely successful and, as Christian Kleese (1999) suggests in his work on modern primitivism and racial representations, individuals who have embraced the idea of a return to primitive practices as a way to reject post-modern culture, have failed to see that their alleged return to primitivism has only served to reify their position as privileged racial Others whilst stressing their “superior” post-colonial nature, since this type of mimicry does not question their membership to post-modern culture. Victoria Pitts (2003: 124–129) also suggests that primitive bodily practices have traditionally been regarded as a source of repulsion and admiration by the West, but that executing such practices on Western bodies simply stresses the way non-Western bodies have been troped, stereotyped and even idealised in the social imaginary of the colonising West. Traditionally, embracing such bodily practices has been regarded as a way, for some Western subjects, to establish a space of separation from (hetero)normative culture by emphasising binary oppositions of self/other, straight/gay, modern/primitive, middle class/lower class, etc. However, since these bodily practices are not necessarily related to ideas of social, ethnic or racial kinship (as originally used by “primitive” tribes), the said subjects fail to

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fully embrace their social significance. As such practices become more common amongst sectors of the population that are not regarded as “subversive”, they integrate themselves into a broader process of cultural assimilation in which body technology becomes a fashion trend (de Mello, 2000). In El cielo, Sergio’s piercing (a stud with a triangular head under his lower lip) suggests that Kleese (1999) is right to suggest that displaying such body technology indicates an awareness of inscribing the body within subculture practices (not necessarily gay although definitely opposed to heteronormativity) in which the stud becomes a visually economical means of asserting kinship (Turner, 2000; Pitts, 2003). Sergio’s piercing is arguably to be read in the context of his adhesion to Mexican gay subculture by wordlessly stressing his sexual orientation rather than his ethnic background.2 As has been previously suggested, the utilisation of body technologies amongst queer subjects departs from the notion of body primitivism as a return to a primal human condition that seeks to distance itself from the core socio-cultural and aesthetics values of (hetero)normative society (Kleese, 2000; Turner, 2000; Atkinson and Young, 2001). The piercing, instead, functions as the technology that de-inscribes Sergio’s body from any racial reading of his ethnic background and re-inscribes it, whilst stressing his membership, in Mexican gay subculture. The piercing becomes the key (or passport) to the system of “fictive kinship” (Weston, 1998) that makes up the notion of the gay community. Since genealogy is not the basis for the establishment of kinship amongst gay men, technologies like piercing allow people with the same interests (in this case sexual orientation) to recognise one another within heteronormative society. This idea is best exemplified in one of the key scenes in the film when the three characters meet for the first time in el antro, as Sergio follows Gerardo upstairs to the bar after leaving Jonás dancing alone. As Sergio reaches the top of the stairs, he finds it hard to approach Gerardo so instead goes to the other end of the bar where a camera close-up of his face draws attention to the piercing under his lip and one on his right earlobe

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(which is also socially regarded as the ear that gay men get pierced). Sergio’s piercing is not meant to be read in the context of his ethnic background or as an exaltation of his ethnic ancestry; instead it is meant to be read in the context of a process of double mimicry in which he imitates a superior Other, a white Western subject who embraces modern primitivism in his attempt to break with Western, colonising ideologies. Sergio’s pierced body becomes an evocative social text and a vehicle of social resistance as tries both to recreate the type of gay self-imaging that is re/over-produced in the West and, at the same time, use his body to resist the notions of machismo that govern male bodies in Mexico. Hernández challenges the stereotypical representations of Indo-mestizos in Mexican cinema through Sergio who is portrayed as the most radical of all gay characters in the film. Not only does he challenge macho culture by using his body as the instrument to fight sexual heteronormative repression, but he also pursues the main character (and what he represents as a real possibility of gay kinship) in spite of the fact that he appears to be in a relationship with a supposedly white(r) superior subject. Sergio, unlike some subjects who embark upon a “flesh journey” (Atkinson and Young, 2001) cannot be regarded as a subject who is trying to re-invent his socio-sexual self in order to break with the parameters established by heteronormative society. Instead, he uses his piercing as the instrument that provides a visually economical image of his gay socio-sexual persona. As Pitts suggests, the queering of body modification reflects a radical politicization of the erotic, sexual body, and engages issues that are of particular importance to gay, lesbian, and transgendered communities. It also reveals the role of powerful discourses, such as pathologization and colonialism, in shaping experiences of the body in relation to sexual politics (2003: 92).

Sergio’s pierced body acts as a clear signifier of a sense and desire of affiliation to gay subcultural practices. The piercing must be understood as an item that brands, whilst it also functions as a brand 122

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for, Sergio as a gay subject. It brands Sergio because it is inscribed into and onto his body and produces a scar (a visual mark) that allows other gay men to recognise his affiliation to Mexican gay subculture. It indicates that Sergio “is one of us”, that is a Mexican gay man, and this legitimises him as a member of the subculture. On the other hand, the piercing also shows an awareness of the importance of the brand (as object rather than action) by which the subcultural gay subject is validated within the given subculture, an idea that follows that of Steven Kates in his work on brand legitimacy in gay subculture (2004). In other words, the Mexican homosexual man is a conscious consumer of images that he considers will validate him as an active member of the subculture. Sergio consumes and models the piercing as a brand (commodity) that is used to establish a shared ethos (homosexuality as an ideology), to maintain boundaries within the subculture (identify non-members) and create a hierarchical structure based on members’ demonstrated commitment (the more radical the presentation of the self, the more committed the person, Sergio, appears to be to the ends of the subculture). As a result, the piercing achieves the de-aboriginalisation of Sergio’s racial body (although with what is arguably the very element constitutive of aboriginal Other practices) that permits him to claim a space of visible presence within gay subculture without fear of being undermined or discriminated against by other white(r) members of the same group. The last element that Hernández utilises in his film to disavow and challenge the idea of the ethnic body as pertaining to aboriginal practices or ancestry is that of the clothed body. In Mil Nubes Gerardo is never presented as a fashion conscious character and for much of the film he wears the same casual clothes (plain T-shirt and jeans). The lack of any recognisable brand (or indeed any brand at all) on his clothes both highlights his position as a lower class individual and distances him from mainstream gay subculture. Unlike Gerardo, the three main characters in El cielo use their clothed bodies to make not only fashion but also social and identity statements and, in a film containing only the minimum of dialogue,

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such visual statements are all the more important so as to convey certain aspects of the characters’ personality. As White (2006) comments in his review of the film, “from the way the characters dress, to their immersion in pop media, Broken Sky is excitingly up-to-date. (Each guy’s different T-shirts make a veritable fashion show of expressive logo-attitudes)”. It is understandable that in a film practically devoid of any dialogue, the director uses all the elements of visual imagery in the mise-en-scène (including costumes) to express the feelings and sentiments of the main characters. Indeed, clothes are often used to express the character’s feelings, but they also have the primary function of indicating or visually acknowledging the wearer’s adherence to Mexican gay subculture. In El cielo the audience never gets to see any of the characters wearing the same garment twice (mainly T-shirts because most of the shots are medium to close-up which means that characters are seen only from the waist up). The decision to show characters wearing outfits only once already places them in a position where they seem conscious of the importance of clothing within gay subculture. As Alison Lurie signals in her study of the language of clothes, “the particular type of Conspicuous Consumption that consists in the multiplication of similar garments is most common among women. In men it is more rare, and usually associated […] with dandyism” (1992: 124). Gerardo, Jonás and Sergio’s array of different T-shirts already tells stories about the wearers; they all have enough money to purchase them, they are all acutely aware of the importance of clothing within both gay Mexican subculture and society at large, and they all express traits of their own personality through their choice of garment. For instance it is only Jonás and Sergio who wear sleeveless T-shirts in order to bare more of their body and establish a relation of sexual hierarchy towards Gerardo. In the film, clothing is the primary method of identification for gay men, as well as one of the strategies for communicating distinct subcultural allegiances within the gay community. As Kate Schofield and Ruth A Schmidt (2005) argue in relation to the construction and

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communication of gay identities through clothing, the combination of certain garments with other visual elements that constitute what could be called the individual’s “gay apparel” (Cole 2000), permits gay subjects to distinguish between the different “tribes” that make up the entire gay subculture and helps the individual in their choice of affiliation. It is not surprising then that when audiences first see Gerardo on screen he is wearing a T-shirt with “McQueen” stitched on the front, a clear reference to Alexander McQueen, the famous British designer. This reference is all the more obvious as the camera dollies right in a medium close shot of Gerardo from his chest up as he walks around the campus at the UNAM. Gerardo’s T-shirt already posits and introduces the character as someone who is fully aware of the importance of fashion within gay subculture. In this sense, clothing constructs the fashioning of Mexican gay subculture and follows Stella Bruzzi’s work on clothing and identity in cinema (1997), in which the different clothes that the actors wear during the film serve to stress a sense of belonging and evoke recognisable signs that would permit members of such a subculture to identify and recognise one another. Clothing as a visual marker of a distinctive gay identity becomes primordial in the film, not through an exploitation of exuberant, flamboyant or outrageous outfits, but through branding and style. Victoria Clarke and Kevin Turner, in a similar analysis of dress, appearance and the construction of gay identities, have suggested that, “lesbians and gay men use clothing and adornment to create a sense of group identity (separate from the dominant culture), to resist and challenge normative (gendered) expectations, and to signal their sexual identity to the wider world or just to those “in the know” (2007: 267). Most of the T-shirts or sleeveless shirts worn by the central characters have either English captions or designs on them that are associated with what could be considered Mexican gay mythology; for example, in one sequence Gerardo wears a T-shirt bearing the mask of El Santo, one of the most iconic figures of Mexican free wrestling who has also become, over time, somewhat of a celebrated figure in the gay homoerotic imagination

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(Subero, 2010). Hernández’s understanding of the current gay Mexican subculture clearly endorses the claim made by Clarke and Turner who suggest that “clothes maketh the queer” (2007: 267) as he depicts the way clothing plays a pivotal role in the creation of an image that socially fits within the accepted parameters established by the gay community, but at the same time allows the gay subject to remain individual and feel that his look is unique or distinctive from other members of the group. Clarke and Turner report that the gay men in their study (conducted in the UK but nevertheless representative of gay experiences elsewhere) “responded to these expectations [looking good and being accepted according to their look within the community] by making sure they ‘make an effort’” (269). A key sequence in El cielo, which shows the three main characters getting ready in their respective homes to go out for a night in el antro, best corroborates the aforementioned notions. The sequence is made up of a series of long shots which cut between Jonás’, Gerardo’s and Sergio’s bedrooms (and back again) as they get ready for what seems to be a big night out, an idea that is further emphasised by the raucous folk soundtrack. In this sequence the camera appears to assume the position of a simple bystander through use of a low-angle camera in a static long shot which offers a view of each character’s bedroom, almost in its entirety, without any further camera movement. The audience gets the opportunity to see the various interactions between the characters and their clothes as they try on different outfits to create a specific look for the occasion. This depiction of homosexual clothing ritualisation may be regarded as reductive and stereotypical, as suggested by Dennis Carlson in his analysis of the performance of identity in a transnational age when he states that, “once more, queer identity is packaged and sold in a way that reinforces many of the same old stereotypes, which reduce identity to the performance of fashion” (2001: 305); yet it could also be suggested that Hernández offers it within a context that is meant to be understood as part of a transnational reading of queer and gay practices and that it acknowledges the importance of clothing

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within gay urban subculture. Rather than reducing the characters to mere fashion victims, through this engaging fashion ritual, Hernández claims that the three characters have fully embraced gay subculture as experienced (or imported through media and accounts of queer migration) in the West and that they do not see their bodies, nor their clothed bodies, as entities that respond to an ancient aboriginal Mexican ancestry or as the racial Other. This ritual lets the film’s characters interact with gay fashion and establish a distance from heteronormative culture, as their clothes are assertions of both difference and sexuality. Stella Bruzzi’s idea of the “fashioning of blackness” could help understand the fashioning of gayness in Hernández’s El cielo since “costumes […] could also be viewed as complex signifiers, symptomatic of a desire to make a political statement through the extreme visibility of a physical, confident and narcissistic look” (1997: 103). To conclude, Roberto Ortíz in interview with director Hernández (2006) offers an insightful contrast between these two films in terms of story backgrounds and the specific gay narratives and messages in each film. He notes how the two films differ in terms of the way love and social taboos are addressed through characters who have different socio-economic conditions. Whereas in Mil nubes protagonists have little in the way of support networks – family or other – so are faced with marginality and the impossibility of love , in El cielo, they can depend on some degree of support from their everyday environment (university, home) and their position as white(r) class media. In other words, Ortíz understands that Julián Hernández’s greater achievement as a gay auteur is not only to offer films that explicitly set out to deal with issues of same-sex desire but more importantly, the de-pathologisation and de-stigmatisation of the gay character in the Mexican social imaginary. Hernández manages to de-inscribe his characters as sexual and racial others and simply presents them as individuals who are part of the social make-up of the Mexican gay subculture and who, as such, have a right to participate in all aspects of this subculture without fear of rejection due to their ethnic background.

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5

Depicting Cross-Dressing in Contemporary Latin American Fiction Cinema1 Transgender representations in fiction cinema As previously suggested, in Latin American popular culture, especially in literature, the transvestite has become a figure that destabilises the heteropatriarchal gender system. He crosses the boundaries that divide the hegemonic constructs of femininity and masculinity, yet for him the act of cross-dressing not only fosters the transgression of (hetero)sexual normativity but also allows for the intersection of other social and cultural discourses such as race, class and politics. As Ben Sifuentes-Jáuregui rightly points out, the figuration of the Latin American national subject “involves the selection of desirable fragments to compose ‘identity’. Likewise, transvestism might involve picking and choosing desirable objects to create a gender effect” (2002: 10). He observes that the Latin American male subject, in order to make sense of his own persona, must choose those aspects of the given culture that best fit his idea of the self, in much the same way as transvestites articulate their own feminine persona through a collection of feminine elements that will (re)create a sense of womanliness. The articulation of the 129

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transvestite character’s feminine persona questions the fixity of the sexual parameters with which Latin American hetero­normative societies regulate sexual(ised) behaviour. However, the problem­ atisation of the transvestite2 subject, of the contestation of Latin heteronormativity under the ideas of machismo and marianismo that Latin American literature commences, is not carried forward by its cinematic counterpart, at least not in those texts that are purely fictional. Whereas transvestite characters in many Latin American literary works3 set out to destabilise the notions of rigid normativity that accompany discourses of sex and sexuality in the continent, that is heterosexuality as the sole form of accepted human sexual orientation, the transvestite characters presented in Latin American fiction cinema have adhered more to the idea of a prescriptive heterosexuality, in which cross-dressing is not related to the individual’s gender identity. With these ideas in mind, this chapter intends to demonstrate that Latin American fiction cinema, at least those with transgender protagonists, has subscribed to the idea of transvestism as a type of temporary cross-dressing that has nothing to do with subverting gender systems. To this end, this chapter will focus on Arturo Ripstein’s El lugar sin límites (1978), Miguel Barreda’s Simón el gran varón (2002) and Karim Aïnouz’s Madame Satã (2002), and demonstrate that these films have failed to offer a more informed reading of the issues concerning transvestism in Latin America that is in line with the research that has been carried out in the continent (Silva, 1993; Prieur, 1998; Kulick, 1998 and 2002; Schifter, 1999; Green, 2000; Higgins and Coen, 2000; Bejel, 2001). Although fiction cinema may not be under any obligation to offer accurate portrayals of sociological issues such as transvestism, it is undeniable that in Latin America, as Julianne Burton suggests, filmmaking has become one of the best tools of dissent to “express ‘national reality’, which they [film directors] believed to be hidden, distorted, or negated by the dominant sectors and the media they controlled” (1986: xi). In this light, Latin American cinema should arguably have a moral obligation and a commitment to social accuracy with

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regard to transgender experiences. However, such a commitment still remains neglected in the three films analysed in this chapter. In a continent where transvestism is still considered by many, even within gay circles, to be the lowest type of subversive gender orientation in existence, it is interesting to note that film directors who seek to open a space of dialogue in relation to alternative sexualities, still cannot offer an accurate or honest portrayal of transvestitic issues. The lack of attention to the issues involving what Ekins (1995) and Ekins & King (1995) also call “male femaling” responds to an inner fear on the part of the film directors to problematise or acknowledge the discomfort felt by the transvestite, since his biological body does not match his felt gender identity. This form of discomfort proves too problematic because it shows audiences the tension(s) undergone by the biologically-gendered body the moment it is visually mutilated or modified by the cross-dresser in his attempt to rectify it. This tension suggests that sexuality is fluid and multiple (Butler, 1993; Takagi, 1996; Otalvaro-Hormillosa, 2000) and that the biological body does not function as guarantor of sexual identity and/or preference whilst, on the other hand, it would ask Latin American audiences to identify with characters that contravene the regulatory practices permitted within heteropatriarchy. As a result, and in order to avoid the alienation of such audiences, by confronting them with a gender identity4 that disrupts the heteronormative binary division man/woman, the directors have decided against depicting such bodily transgressions, whilst also keeping to a minimum the time devoted to onscreen transvestism. It could be suggested that the Latin American film gaze has been naturalised as heteromasculine (de la Mora, 2006; King, 1989; Hershfield, 1996; Radcliffe and Westwood, 1996) and that most cinematic images are produced for such a macho male gaze5, the introduction and display of transvestitic images on screen deemed too shocking for such audiences to assimilate. And, although it cannot be denied that the last decade has seen the emergence of a more solid body of queer and gay films in the continent and that, as suggested previously, gay characters are more

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prominent in popular audiovisual culture, especially in soap operas, such texts do not attempt to explore the multiple possibilities of body and desire beyond the traditional heteronormative biological binary, even if their sexual desires relate to their own sex. Rather than simply focusing on directorial and moral respons­ ibility in relation to the depiction of transvestism in Latin America, the aim of this chapter is to draw attention to problematic aspects of the representation of transvestism in the selected films, and how these can affect the audience’s perception of transgender issues. To this end, each film will be analysed separately and will discuss the different aspects of the transvestitic experience(s) that have remained unexplored in them. El lugar sin límites will focus primarily on the failure of the power of address of the cross-dresser, who desires to be read as a woman as long as his external appearance corresponds to mainstream notions of masculinity. It is argued that the transgender subject cannot be regarded as a woman as long as he appears dressed as a man (even if his behaviour is very effeminate). Although certain feminine items of clothing might provide him with a temporary feminine investment, such an investment will not be sufficient to erase the male image he has projected onto the people around him. This section also explores how the protagonist’s gender identity, and the sexuality it accompanies under the binary “man as heterosexual versus transvestite as homosexual”, is manipulated by the people who make him abject due to his sexual orientation. Simón el gran varón analyses the importance of the mirrored image for the transvestite subject, and how transvestism can be used as a type of violent attack on femininity rather than an expression of an inwardly felt gender identity. It will also continue with an exploration of the idea of the transvestite altar (borrowing from the notions of the altar as discussed in Chapter Three). The discussion will then move on to how transvestism is depicted as a short-term activity in which the subject engages, but that may not be related to his desire to portray the gender identity that has been denied to him by his biological gender. Madame Satã consolidates the ideas explored in the previous films, to then move onto the idea of transvestism

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depicted through a (hyper)masculine body that transgresses more normativity than heteronormativity. There is a return to the idea of the transvestitic altar, as well as transvestism as a parody of womanliness in which the subject holds phallic power because he has a penis and, although he may address himself as a “she”, his external appearance and behaviour contradict this self-labelling. Rather than offering a simple conclusion to this section, an analysis of the transvestite character in María Novaro’s Danzón (1991) will be offered as a contrast to the misinformed issues surrounding the transvestism of the previous characters explored in this chapter with the transvestism of this character. It will be demonstrated that Novaro’s depiction of transvestism supports the idea that transvestites are subjects whose effeminacy can be exemplary for, and copied by, heterosexual women. It will be argued that since this director has tried to fight the heteromasculine nature of Latin American cinema through her work, she is capable of offering a more accurate portrayal of transgender issues. Although the three films in question are centred around the lives and experiences of three cross-dressers, a quick look at these films will show that very little diegetic time was spent dealing with the issues and processes involved in the transformation from man to woman, or showing transvestism as the externalisation of a self-perceived gender identity. In the case of the first two films, both spend less than two minutes visually dealing with transvestitic practices, and the third spends only a little over ten minutes addressing such issues. In fact each film spends significantly less than a fifth of their total running time showing the three most important aspects of cross-dressing: (a) what sort of mental processes transvestites have to go through when they embody their self-perceived effeminacy; (b) what it signifies to transvestites to become a feminine other, that is a feminine figure that is not necessarily read as a woman in the normative heterosexual paradigm but still partakes in the discourse of the configuration of femininity (Pancrazio 2004: 12–13), and (c) the rejection or support transvestites find with regard to their feminine personae from their families and social

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surroundings. What is even more striking about these films is that they suggest that cross-dressing is an unimportant (even irrelevant) aspect of the transvestite protagonists’ lives, and that none of the issues surrounding cross-dressing practices have an impact on their psycho-social personae. The transgender characters analysed in this section seem to be subjects who fail to deal with what Marjorie Garber (1997: 120–121) defines as fetish envy, the ownership of desire that is attained by both acknowledging the biological gender lack and attaining the social significance of such a lack through a transvestitic investment. More importantly, the temporary moment of identity crisis suffered by the transvestite during the process of femaling, the moment when he masquerades his masculinity, is never fully addressed. That key moment of “sublimation”, when the transvestite embarks upon the fixing of his external physiognomy so as to make his external appearance look like his own perception of the self, is never touched on in these films. For Manuel González Astica, Simón and João Francisco dos Santos (the transvestite protagonists in the three stories), becoming a woman, or rather emulating effeminacy, seems to be completely unproblematic, with no reference to the moment when, “the fetishist recognizes the reality of the lack but disavows it through an accumulation of other parts” (Pancrazio 2004: 18).

El lugar sin límites In the Mexican film El lugar sin límites La Manuela (Roberto Cobo) owns the only house standing in the way of Don Alejo’s (Fernando Soler) selling the entire village for profit. When Pancho (Gonzalo Vega) returns to town, La Manuela and his daughter La Japonesita (Ana Martín) are drawn into a fight over his love. In this film version of José Donoso’s novel, La Manuela seems to self-identify as a woman from the very beginning of the film. However, the fact that he refers to himself as “una” does not necessarily make him a transvestite, or even suggest to the audience that they are dealing with a man who believes himself to be a woman. Although 134

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not only Manuel but also the people around him address him as La Manuela (as a way of acknowledging his alleged femininity), it could be argued that what they are really acknowledging is his homosexuality, and that by calling him in the feminine they only reify the popular view that homosexuality and effeminacy go hand in hand (Almaguer, 1993; Murray, 1995; Lancaster, 1997; Guttmann, 1997). Transferring Donoso’s novel from its original setting in Chile to a macho-orientated Mexico (Paz, 1977; Andrade, 1992; Guttmann, 1997) already ascribes the film within a hypermasculine context in which the idea of cross-dressing almost violently opposes heteronormativity. Since La Manuela is not only presented as a transvestite but also as a prostitute, he encapsulates all the negative aspects of femininity in stark contrast to the notions of marianismo, which is culturally regarded as the epitome of perfect womanhood (Stevens, 1973b; Collier, 1986). La Manuela is therefore presented as the ultimate marginal and transgressive character because his sexuality (homosexuality), his gender identity (femaler) and even his trade (prostitute) are regarded as subversive within (hetero)normativity. La Manuela becomes a confusing figure because he is a cross-dresser who spends most of the film dressed as a man, an action that suggests a contradiction between his self-perceived gender identity and the externalisation of such an identity. For instance, when he arrives at the brothel for the first time (dressed as a man) La Clotis (Hortensia Santoveña) remarks “pechillos no tienes, pero buen cutis sí” [you don’t have much of a chest, but at least you’ve got a pretty face], placing him again in a position in which his femaleness is called into question because he lacks one of the external attributes (women’s breasts) that would portray him as a woman. However, it is puzzling to make sense of the reasons behind La Clotis’s assumption that she is dealing with a woman, when in fact there is nothing in this first appearance of La Manuela at the brothel to suggest he regards himself as a woman. It could be argued that Ripstein’s perception of La Manuela (as evidenced by La Clotis’s remark) as a queer character follows that of

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Bernhardt Roland Schulz who suggests in his analysis of Donoso’s novel that “[t]he character sees himself as a woman because it lacks a sociological model that integrates his masculine biology and his sexual orientation” (1989: 226). However, such an assertion proves too simplistic and reductive to try to understand La Manuela as a queer, gay and more importantly transgender subject, since it suggests that all Latin gay men see themselves as women because they cannot engage with notions of butch queer, whilst it also rejects the transgender model La Manuela tries to identify with. It is clear that such a remark helps perpetuate the misconception that gay men are in fact failed women, a failed product of the mismatch between their biological body(ies) and their perceived sexuality6. Throughout the film, all references to La Manuela’s femaleness remain at the level of speech but never appear to crystallise through his body. Although it appears that his ultimate goal is to be seen and read as a woman by the people who come into contact with him, he tries to do so always dressed as a man (a somewhat contradictory and illogical action). At the level of the diegesis, it could be argued that La Manuela’s process of femaling cannot be completed because his red dress, which seems to operate as his passport to femaleness, had been torn into pieces. However, the protagonist’s eagerness to fix the dress, and engage in femaling once again, appears to derive more from his attraction to Pancho rather than a desire to emulate femininity as part of his perceived gender identity. Even though the red dress supposedly functions as the object that destabilises, or at least confuses, the gender status of the phallocentric symbolic order, the film never shows La Manuela’s process of femaling or even his female persona for any length of time that would allow the audience to understand his desire to cross-dress. La Manuela also seems to regard himself as a caricature of the feminine, a man whose sole purpose in the brothel is to entertain the customers by being the object of mockery or as he states; “una loca siempre alegra el burdel” [a faggot always brightens up a brothel]. Ripstein seems more than willing to present La Manuela as a caricature of womanliness and it is this caricaturised representation

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that, as Suzanne Jill Levine (2002) has pointed out, costs the director the participation of acclaimed Argentinean novelist Manuel Puig in the scriptwriting team. As she clearly indicates, “Manuel feared mainly that Ripstein would turn the gay character into a caricature” (287). It could be argued that the director’s decision to depict La Manuela as an exaggerated caricature of homosexuality may have been influenced by his desire to play with the audience’s expectations of the male protagonist, since Roberto Cobo had become a well-known actor in Mexico through his performance of a young delinquent in Luís Buñuel’s Los Olvidados (1950), as well as his many interpretations in the comical role of Calambres7. This caricaturesque take on transvestism in the film is further reinforced by “long takes and extended tracking shots, a sparse use of close-ups, claustrophobic, tawdry, dark, enclosed interiors, often kitschy mise-en-scène, [that] characterize his frequently predatory, relentlessly voyeuristic, and impassively detached gaze” (de la Mora 2006: 107). In El lugar, La Manuela does not take himself seriously as a woman, or a woman in the making, and appears to use transvestism as an act of mischief and rebellion. He gives the impression of being a “naughty” gay man who wants to contravene his daughter’s wish that he is treated or at least addressed as a real man, which in turn prevents him from being regarded as a woman by those around him. La Manuela knows that people do not perceive him as a woman, but that they will accept his homosexuality as long as he portrays a ridiculous caricature of womanliness that serves only to reify the manhood of the other men around him. Unsurprisingly, during the party flashback sequence, La Manuela is bullied by other men whilst dressed as himself; however, the moment he puts a dress on, the mockery turns into curiosity, thereby allowing him to channel the heterosexual men’s fears of his homosexuality through his ridiculous version of effeminacy. Schifter (1999: 33–34) is right to point out that most transvestitic subjects (those who identify as homosexual) present separate personalities that share the same body, and in which the female personality represents the liberation of a sexually repressed self.

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However, in the film, Ripstein also chooses to ignore this aspect of cross-dressing since, for La Manuela, transvestism has never involved a multiplicity of personalities. If, as Schifter suggests, “transvestites aspire to a different state of being” (1999: 34) because they are aware of the plurality of personalities that co-exist within them, it could be argued that La Manuela has failed to articulate such personalities as part of his sexual persona. If he is trying to be regarded as a woman, then one could wonder why he is not as adamant in looking like one. This matter becomes all the more confusing as most of the people close to La Manuela insist on addressing him as a she (apart from La Japonesita who abhors seeing her father addressed as a woman), yet he never tries to create the illusion of the feminine in his appearance. It is illogical that La Manuela does not seem preoccupied about his physical appearance in order to look more like the woman he allegedly is, and which research suggests is the ultimate intention of the transvestite. For instance, La Manuela’s reply to La Clotis’s remark (as previously discussed) is “y eso que me agarras recién levantada y sin pintar” [and you’ve just caught me getting up and with no makeup], suggests that his feminine self-presentation is of vital importance as part of his sexuality, yet it is a self-presentation he never articulates visually on his own body – a womanliness that is visually absent from the character although it does not seem to go unnoticed by the people around him. This idea reinforces Ripstein’s assumption that since La Manuela is gay, his desire to cross-dress, even if occasionally, is a natural sign of his homosexuality; furthermore, the fact that the people around him regard and address him as if he were a woman (without the need to look like one) also responds to the intrinsic effeminacy that is attached to male same-sex desire. In spite of the emphasis placed on the red dress, neither this nor any other feminine garment of clothing is used as the instrument through which the male protagonist experiences and attains a self-perceived femininity. The film suggests to the audience that the protagonist’s cross-dressing is not intended to externalise his felt gender identity but his sexual orientation, as well as to serve as a bait to attract

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men to engage sexually with him with the false promise of straight sex or sex with a “chick with a dick” (Taylor & Rupp, 2004). La Manuela becomes the sort of cross-dresser that uses transvestism in order to entice other men to sleep with him by making them feel they are pursuing a “real” woman. This idea follows Anne Prieur (1998) who points out in her research on transvestism in Mexico City that there is a tacit negotiation between the transvestite and the mayate. The transvestite will try to play the part of a “real” woman as accurately as possible in order to allure the mayate within a supposedly heterosexual orchestration of straight seduction, whilst the mayate allows himself to be seduced by such a “woman” as long as such a seduction is kept within the limits of a pretended heterosexuality. As Prieur states, to a certain extent, the mayates can have sex with men without ever being aware of it. Many vestidas [transvestites] look completely like women, even with their clothes off. If they do not let the man touch their intimate parts, they are often capable of having sex without his discovering that he has had anal instead of vaginal intercourse. But what is probably more common is for the men to fool themselves, rather than being fooled (189).

In El lugar, although La Manuela was dressed as a woman when he seduced Pancho (as diegetically suggested by the flashback sequence), the people who come into contact with both men cannot forget, and so remind the latter, that the former is a gay man who is habitually dressed as a man, an action which overrides his supposed femaleness. The illusion of the feminine that La Manuela is trying to convey becomes unnatural, or at least artificial, to the people around him who cannot forget what he looks like as a man regardless of how effeminate he may be. It is these same people who will eventually truncate the possibility of the male protagonists developing a relationship because they will always remind Pancho that La Manuela is not a real woman, or not a woman at all, and that their attraction goes against the pillars of heteronormativity. 139

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La Manuela is also portrayed as the sort of character whose sexuality can be manipulated by the person interested in him, and not by his real sexual desire(s). During the flashback sequence, La Japonesa (Lucha Villa) seduces him into having sex with her (although she has an ulterior motive because she has betted she can make a “real” man of him in order to win the house where the brothel is). As La Japonesa sits on the bed in only her underwear, La Manuela cannot stop looking at her semi-naked body. When they finally lie down, the medium shot of La Japonesa caressing her lover’s body, along with the reddish chiaroscuro in the bedroom, gives an erotic tone to a situation that should have been rather traumatic for the transvestite protagonist. Moreover, the process of de-femaling that La Manuela undergoes at the hands of La Japonesa not only transgresses the latter’s assumed gender identity but also his sexual identity as a gay man (by making him perform as a heterosexual man and fuck her). This conveys to the audience that, subconsciously, La Manuela could never be a real woman because his penis will always prevail as the organ that controls his “real” sexual desire, since this organ is essentialised as intrinsically heterosexual. This decision to show La Manuela being undressed and seduced by a woman in order to bring his heterosexual desires to the forefront, responds to a heteronormative interest in showing the conversion from socially unacceptable to socially acceptable. Once sex has been consummated, La Manuela begins to show signs that he is attracted to the idea of becoming La Japonesa’s partner, but the latter is quick to point out that what happened between the two was only another brothel transaction and that any feelings towards La Japonesa are to be dismissed. What is striking about this is not only that La Japonesa feels confident enough in her femininity to attempt to “turn around” a self-professed gay man who sees himself as a woman, but also that Ripstein wastes no time in showing La Manuela’s willingness to engage in a heterosexual relationship. In El lugar the penis is viewed as essentially heterosexual and there seems to be no space to suggest that the penis could ever be essentialised as homosexual. In other words, all the instances of “penises” in the

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film (moments in which the penis is shown on screen to reaffirm masculinity) suggest that, regardless of the sexual orientation or gender identity of the person, the possession of the penis signifies the possession of a male heterosexual desire that may have remained hidden or unexplored by the male subject. In the film there are three moments where the penis becomes a regulatory force that seizes gender relations, as well as sexual desires within heteronormativity. One instance occurs just prior to that already discussed in which La Manuela and La Japonesa engage sexually. During the celebration party for Don Alejo’s victory in the recent elections, La Manuela prepares a dance routine to entertain the brothel’s guests. As he dances, he becomes the object of mockery amongst the men who witness his performance. When the men begin to “manhandle” La Manuela, the situation gets out of control and he ends up being carried out and thrown into a nearby shallow river. However, as he comes out of the river, the other men can see the outline of his big penis through his soaked clothes. At this point, they all express admiration and jealousy because they cannot believe that a homosexual possesses such a big organ. It is interesting to notice that once the people around La Manuela learn of the size of his penis, their attitude towards him changes because the size of his manhood procures a degree of heteromasculine respect. This idea echoes the postulates of Peter Lehman in his study of the role of the penis in Hollywood cinema when he asserts that “if the penis is going to be shown it had better be an impressive spectacle or, if it fails to live up to that standard, it had better be the unrepresented object of scornful humor” (2001: 26). The size of La Manuela’s penis is a clear indication to La Japonesa and, by extension, a suggestion by the film director that La Manuela’s inner sexual desires are heterosexual because such a big organ cannot be “wasted” in homosexual relations. The other instance in which the penis comes to control a character’s inner sexuality and the externalisation of their gender identity is when Pancho and La Japonesita meet for the first time. Pancho, who has just been reprimanded for his childish behaviour by Don

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Alejo, is crying in a secluded area of the village shop. When La Japonesita finds him, he is still unable to stop sobbing. As she looks at the man she is attracted to behaving in such an “unmanly” manner, a close-up shows her hand grabbing his crotch (penis), and it is only then that Pancho stops crying. It could be argued that Pancho’s penis governs his sexuality and sexual behaviour and that La Japonesita’s action activates his manliness while eliminating any signs of weakness or effeminacy. Pancho’s crying posits him as effeminate and/or queer but La Japonesita’s reactivation of his masculinity brings this moment to an end. In fact, once Pancho is “back to normal” he threatens La Japonesita with a beating in case she tells anyone she has seen him crying. It seems that all the “penises” in this film are naturalised as “macho penises”, as they all reaffirm the male heterosexual desires and manliness of its bearer, regardless of the gender orientation that the person claims for himself. Since machismo still operates as the regulatory force that controls and seizes gender relations in Latin America, it is only natural that its cinema (especially in the 1970s) would have adhered to the idea of a male gaze for which cinematic images are built and shaped. The film’s heavy reliance on melodrama which, in Latin America and particularly in Mexican cinema (de la Mora, 1993 & 2003; Hershfield, 1996; Wood, 2001) is quintessentially patriarchal as it portrays the conflicts between duty and desire in its protagonists, further supports the idea that the film responds to the anxieties of an audience that is naturalised as heterosexual and for whom the transgression of the very nature of heterosexuality constitutes a threat to the stability of the heteronormative order. Although the film wastes no time in disavowing the very idea that La Manuela should be regarded as a woman rather than the biological man he appears to be, Pancho needs to read him as such in order to locate his desire within a model that would not destabilise heteronormativity. For Pancho, La Manuela becomes the ultimate woman because not only can he be the receiver of his hombría but he can also provide him with anal pleasure. Towards the end of the film, La Manuela, with red dress in hand, goes into hiding after

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Pancho arrives drunk at the brothel (his fear highlighted by a low angle zoom-in that shows his terrified face). However, it is also evident that the dress has the ability to provide him with phallic power in order to make a “real” woman out of him. The moment La Manuela puts the red dress on, he becomes a strong woman who possesses, as Garber calls it “the ownership of desire” (1997: 120). This is further evidenced by the long shot of La Manuela leaning against the door seductively as she enters the room where Pancho is about to rape La Japonesita. Once again the red dress becomes the catalyst for the protagonist’s assumed gender identity and what Entwistle in her analysis of the social function of dress calls “epidermis of self-awareness” (2001: 44), because it is only through its presence and investment that the character is aware of the limits, boundaries and power of his own gendered body. The red dress constitutes the vehicle that channels bodily explorations beyond the comfortable binary established by heteronormativity. If dress is a bodily practice, as suggested by Entwistle following Merleau-Ponty (1962), it is hard to understand why La Manuela insists on living his “female” life dressed in masculine clothing. It appears that La Manuela is not a transvestite but a man who dresses temporarily as a woman because he finds that the embodiment of a specific item of clothing, the red dress as leitmotif of the movie, allows his sexual advances to be read as socially permissible. As long as La Manuela wears the red dress, Pancho will accept being seduced and will be thrilled by the character’s behaviour because he looks like a woman (although just barely). The issues around the “politics of pleasure”, as suggested by Higgins and Coen (2000), that is to say, the moment of transformation or modification of biological gender into an illusory gender, and in which most transvestites “talk about how they physically and emotionally feel themselves change as they go through the makeover process” (162) is not explored in this sequence or the film as a whole. Although it cannot be denied that the film was radical in its portrayal of (homo) sexuality at the time of its release in 1976 (Foster, 2002; de la Mora, 1993 & 2006), it is not as sexually daring as it seems at first glance

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because its central character is firstly heteronormalised by his refusal to dress as a woman, in spite of his continuous self-identification as such, to then be finally eradicated – unsurprisingly – for subverting the status quo of the gendered symbolic order. In this sense, La Manuela’s fate follows that of the classical femme fatale who, according to Mary Ann Doane, “is situated as evil and frequently punished or killed. Her textual eradication involves a desperate reassertion of control on the part of the threatened male subject. Hence, it would be a mistake to see her as some kind of heroine of modernity” (1991: 02). La Manuela is a radical character because he lives at the margin of society, sexuality and gender, and yet it is clear that the destabilisation of (hetero)normativity only occurs at the level of speech since such transvestitic images are barely shown in the film. If as Percio de Castro suggests, “el travestismo de este personaje [La Manuela] funciona como elemento centralizador del relato” [The character’s transvestism functions as the central element in the narrative] (2004: 116), then Ripstein’s unwillingness to show La Manuela as a woman undermines the character’s assumed gender identity.

Simón el Gran Varón A Mexican film by Miguel Barreda, this is perhaps the most inaccurate of the three films analysed here in terms of the depictions of transgender issues from an original text that was overtly articulated around notions of male femaling. The film is based very loosely on Willie Colon’s 1989 hit song of the same name. Although Colon’s lyrics are acknowledged as the source of the story in the film’s writing credits, apart from the name of the main male characters, Simón (Gibrán González) and Don Andrés (Alberto Estrella), nothing else in the film remains faithful to these. In fact, the film departs from the story in the song8 and focuses on the problems faced by Simón growing up on his dad’s ranch in Mexico. After leaving the parental home, he begins to cross-dress in the bar where he has found a job and ends up having sex with 144

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his boss (Fernando Sieber), who turns out to be his half-brother. After discovering the truth about his sibling, Simon falls ill and dies alone in a hospital. The director not only moves the story from an urban setting to a rural one – a decision that can be directly linked to the importance of the charro as a hypermasculine figure in Mexican folklore (Mary-Lee Mulholland, 2007; de la Mora, 2006; Mirandé, 1997; Nájera-Ramírez, 1994) – but he also disregards the idea of transvestism as a gender identity rather than just a practice (as suggested by Colón’s lyrics9). Besides the flaws in the storyline, the film also fails to deliver what promises to be “a gender bender threatening traditional machismo attitudes” (Vanguard Cinema, 2002). To begin with, the film addresses homosexuality in a very telenovela fashion, that is to say that the film relies heavily on melodrama to convey the subject matter. It also rejects some of the most characteristic notions of cross-dressing and transvestism as the manifestation of a repressed gender identity. The film plays considerably with the notions of homosexual identity formation (Fausto-Sterling 2000: 74–77) where the boy regards his mother not as an object of desire but as an object to imitate. For instance, in the childhood scenes, Simón is depicted as the stereotypical mariquita [little maricón] who enjoys playing with dolls and engages in traditional girly activities. From his inability and unwillingness to ride a horse to being discovered clutching his sister’s dolls as he sleeps, Barreda does not want his audience to forget at any time that Simón is a mariquita. By presenting Simón as a girly boy, the director prepares the terrain so that the public do not question the protagonist’s first cross-dressing experience and his eventual transvestism. In one key sequence the young Simón (Román Hernández Jr.), aged around eight or nine, sneaks into his mother’s bedroom and sits at the dresser. A medium close-up shows his face reflected in the mirror as he takes his mother’s makeup and begins to apply it. As he does this, the grin on his face seems to get wider and wider from the obvious pleasure he derives from seeing his real (self-perceived) self projected in the mirror for the first time. At this point it is possible to wonder exactly what such a young Simón

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sees in the mirror: is it a boy being naughty for doing something forbidden or is it the girl he feels lives inside of him who remains oppressed by society’s expectations of his gendered body? In his smile the young Simón shows, as Bueno and Caesar point out in their analysis of Latin American popular culture, “that the mirror is a sign of self reflection, as well as a window to an imaginary space” (1998: 65). Immediately after, the camera pans up to show him fully dressed in his mother’s clothes (high heels and all) and his face heavily made up; yet this pleasurable activity is interrupted by his father who violently bursts into the room. A medium shot then shows both Simón and his father reflected in the same mirror, though this time the mirror becomes the instrument through which to confront the status of the hetero-masculine symbolic order. Hence, the audience becomes aware of two distinctive images that confront and repel one another. On the one hand, Simón is seen to conceal his masculine traits through the masquerading of femininity attained through his mother’s dress and makeup, an act that allows him to play out, on his own body, the tensions between his gendered body and his felt gender orientation. On the other, Don Andrés is presented as the epitome of the Mexican macho (with bigote and sombrero [with moustache and sombrero]) who feels betrayed by his son’s actions and thinks that the only way to rectify his son’s behaviour is by punishing him physically. Unfortunately, the film seems more preoccupied with criticising machismo than exploring the transvestitic desires of the protagonist. The film invites the audience to repel Don Andrés’s behaviour, but it forgets to question the transvestitic experience itself. Simón then follows what Teresa de Lauretis in her analysis of representations in cinema calls “the movement of narrative discourse” in which the movie “specifies and even produces the masculine position as that of the mythical subject and the feminine position as mythical obstacle” (1985: 141). This situation echoes that depicted in Alain Berliner’s Ma vie en rose (1997), about which Michael Schiavi points out “the sadistic antagonist is less a masculine subject than a masculine discourse that exists precisely to annihilate non-masculine boys”

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(2004: 03). In other words, Simón’s transvestitic tendencies, or early experimentations, prove the failure of the patriarchal system embedded in the figure of the macho and, more importantly, prove the failure of Don Andrés as guarantor of the perpetuation of such a system. Another interesting aspect of this sequence is the careful construction of a transvestitic altar in order to provide the young Simón with a divine experience. Lipsticks, eye shadows, mascaras, eye liner pencils and face powder are some of the elements necessary in the ritual of femaling and which also form part of the altar of the transgender subject. This altar, as already suggested by the work of Alejandro Yarza (1999), allows for the transcendental experience of becoming a woman to be made tangible through a process of representation. The process of femaling becomes a process of “expiation” of the individual’s masculinity in order to embrace the almost divine experience of attaining femininity. As a result, the transvestite subject will display a kind of religious fervour to makeup, dresses and anything else used to construct his female persona. This amalgamation of objects, and also of images of women who come to represent the epitome of femininity, are utilised to build a complex symbolic altar in which the transgender subject sees his own sense of womanliness projected and re-created. This divine space allows the cross-dresser to get closer to the divine experience of attaining femininity since it constitutes an externalisation of the real “self ”. Unfortunately, in Simón, the spectators never get to witness, through the protagonist’s transvestitic experiences, this moment of divine ecstasy when he finally becomes who he believes himself to be, that is to say when he recreates his self-perceived idea of his own gendered self. Although this sequence ends with Simón beaten up by his father, it appears that this episode has not provoked any kind of trauma in him since, later on in the film, he seems more than willing to jump at the opportunity to cross-dress. The memory and eventual trauma of such a violent childhood episode has not left any marks on Simón’s life, or at least no mark strong enough to make him

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hesitate about cross-dressing. Simón’s transvestism also seems to occur by pure chance as he replaces another transvestite who has had an accident (yet another liberty of the director in relation to the original source of the story) in the bar where he has just started working. In this way, transvestism becomes a job rather than an expression of a felt gender identity, an idea that is further reinforced by the fact that Simón is depicted as a cheap copy of a woman. This cheap representation of womanhood supports Carole-Anne Taylor’s idea that the drag queen, which is the closet category that can be assigned to Simón’s representation of femaleness, may be labelled as misogynist because what he tries to do is ridicule femaleness, not imitate it (1991: 37–40). Simón’s transvestism does not introduce the idea, as Marjorie Garber suggests, of a third sex that “questions binary thinking and introduces crisis – a crisis that is symptomatized by both the overestimation and underestimation of cross-dressing” (1997: 11). In the film, Simón never introduces a new category of sex or gender; he simply happens to be a gay man who ends up dressing up as a woman without really engaging in the psychosexual complexities of male femaling. As Simón tries to persuade the owner of the bar to allow him do the show, he says “usted se habrá dado cuenta de mi conducta” [you will have noticed my tendencies by now] and in this way offers justification for his incursion into cross-dressing. Barreda, like Ripstein, understands homosexuality, effeminacy and cross-dressing as symptomatic of same-sex male desire. The way he is forced to justify his own homosexuality and cross-dressing interest, as part of the same articulation of sex and sexuality, means that Simón sees his transvestism as a logical part of his homosexuality. However, Simón’s production of the self seems incongruous with his “desire” to emulate femininity. If, as Hélio Silva suggests, for the transvestite “tudo deve ser ‘femininamente’ acabado” [everything has to be finished femininely] (1993: 122) then it is rather odd, for example, that when he engages sexually with his boss, spectators discover that he is wearing boxer shorts under his dress and suspenders. By wearing such an item of clothing, Simón obliterates the whole notion of femaling that implies “um

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aprendizado em que roupas, gestos, posturas, expressões, maneiras de andar, formas de pegar vão sendo testados e readaptados” [a learning process in which clothes, gestures, postures, expressions, ways of walking, ways of holding himself are tested and readapted] (123) in order to create a believable woman for himself and the world around him. Simón’s reluctance to wear women’s underwear, as well as act and look more feminine, shows his lack of engagement with the idea of femaling. As a result, the film suggests that Simón’s transvestitic body is an empty recipient of a failed masculinity that would not procure, in its attainment of any kind of femininity, a way to project his self-perceived gender identity. If this film is trying to open a space of dialogue between machista attitudes prevalent in countries such as Mexico and a better understanding of the different aspects of male homosexuality (of which transvestism is one), then the ending of the film still fails to de-stigmatise male homosexual desire. Besides the various problems with the depiction of Simón’s transvestism, the way he is represented leaves very little space for audiences to empathise with the problems faced by the character. It is only logical then that he has to be annihilated for being such an unmanly man, dishonouring his family and seducing his own brother.

Madame Satã It has been previously suggested that for most cross-dressers their bodies become the sites in which a self-perceived femininity is brought to the foreground. The dressed body constitutes the locus where repression and resistance are played out, as it becomes the crucial signifier of the individual’s gender identity. As Entwistle points out “when getting dressed one orientates oneself/body to the situation, acting in particular ways upon the surfaces of the body which are likely to fit within the established norms of the situation” (2001: 45). However, the Brazilian-French co-production Madame Satã offers a loose portrait of some key moments in the life of João Francisco do Santos, a thief and transvestite who lived in the Lapa 149

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region of Rio de Janeiro in the 1930s, and who was also known by the name of the film’s title. In this feature, dress as a bodily practice is ambivalent as João’s body (Lázaro Ramos) is always presented as a hypermasculine entity that cross-dresses temporarily and without engaging in what Kulick regards in his study of Brazilian transvestism as “becoming a travesti” (1998). For Kulick transvestites long “to permanently acquire the physical features that they define as hallmarks of femininity – features they desire to make them attractive in the eyes of the men that they depend on to make them feel like ‘total women’” (46–47). If this is the case, then the spectator is made aware that the film has chosen to leave out any theorisation of transgender identity, that is what drives João to cross-dress. This is all the more incoherent since all the literature on the real life character suggests that he abided by the active/passive sexual binary prevalent at the time, and he regarded himself as a bicha – the Brazilian term for an effeminate, passive homosexual (Green, 2000 & 2003; Shaw 2007). In the film, João’s transvestism does not pretend to create the illusion of femininity (although it is implied that this is his ultimate intention) as he disavows the gendered-symbolic dress. Most cross-dressers are fully aware that their clothed bodies will not, as suggested by Eicher and Roach-Higgins, “provide a visually economic way to reinforce that fact that wearers have the sex organs that are primary physical distinctions between the sexes” (1993: 17). If anything, they try to conceal their “lack” by manipulating properties of the body that are read through clothing and with which people communicate personal characteristics, including the important distinction of gender. Unfortunately, João’s body is presented from a hypermasculine and phallocentric point of view that seems to respond to what Teresa de Lauretis (1985) calls “a circuit of violence” in which the body, and the clothes on it, become a weapon of cultural and sexual transgression. João’s cross-dressing seems to respond more to a need to contravene social normativity. By modifying his body through very ambivalent and androgynous clothing he creates a significant symbol that confuses

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gender specifications, yet he is presented as a cross-dresser who is neither a man nor a woman. Such an androgynous presentation may be seen by some as one of the many strengths of the film, but it is undeniable that such a poly-sexualised depiction of the character responds more to the director’s intention to offer an ambivalent reading of the character rather than offering an accurate portrayal of the protagonist’s real life. Aïnouz’s androgynous depiction of Satã seems to contradict Green’s findings on the historical character when he points out that “ele alterou as sobrancelhas para sugerir uma aparência femenina […] ele percebeu bem sua identificação com a vida nas ruas dos travestis cariocas, na medida em que conseguia se mover no vocabulário típico con sua voz ‘alterada’” [he shaped his eyebrows to create a more feminine appearance […] he associated himself with the lives of the Carioca street transvestites, inasmuch as he used to utilise their typical vocabulary with his “altered” voice] (2003: 216). Green suggests that the “polyvalent” nature of Satã’s persona did not reside in the androgyny of his physical appearance but the fact that his ability to fight with a knife or his bare hands was not behaviour associated with that of the bichas (210). The director’s decision to portray João as a hypermasculine character is so blatant that he also introduces the character Tabu (Flávio Bauraqui) as a cross-dresser in stark contrast to the film’s protagonist. Both characters can be equally effeminate and camp at times. However João is the only one who is able to regress or step back into hypermasculine terrain and behave in a more manly way, to the point of being physically aggressive towards Tabu and Laurita (Marcelia Cartaxo). The film gives the impression that the protagonist’s body overrides his transgender identity because even when he is wearing women’s clothes he acts in a hyper-macho manner. This is further reinforced by the predominant hand-held camerawork that uses close-ups and extreme close-ups to worship the protagonist’s muscular body, whilst the chiaroscuro that abounds throughout the film makes the colours of his different attires stand out. By the same token, the relation between figure and background seems to establish a photographic narrative in which, at times, the

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darkness of the non-lighted areas blends with João’s skin colour. The scenic image is conceived in such a way that the camera seems to linger where the spectator cannot. Although João shows signs of a desire to emulate femininity through his external appearance, as suggested by the sequences in which he dresses in his mistress’s clothes, it is most interesting that the first time he appears cross-dressed onstage, his body is heavily troped as if he were a kind of mythological animal. He becomes the Brazilian alternative to the Minotaur, a very muscular man who is also part beast, and whose image responds to a male-centred fantasy of masculinity and animal sexual prowess. This hypermasculine image is presented as part of a parodic moment in which the protagonist seems to be mocking femininity through his own ridiculed version of transvestism. João’s sexuality transgresses the moral codes of heteropatriarchal Brazilian society, and yet his cross-dressing is presented from a heterosexual stand, so as to avoid the alienation of a heterosexual audience (both within and even outside the film). This idea echoes that of Lancaster (1997: 09– 11) when he suggests that within heteronormativity, heterosexual men are allowed to push the boundaries that control the fixity of sexuality so long as, when they do so, it is in a moment of sexual parody. João’s cross-dressing helps to problematise transvestism as a non-fixed notion in which gender identity and sexual orientation are not necessarily one and the same, yet it seems paradoxical that a self-asserted bicha travesti would offer such an extremely masculine performance of his gendered self. The way he is dressed during this first public appearance as Madame Satã – his naked, muscular torso exposed whilst the camera zooms in on his crotch and legs, highlighting his masculine attributes – does very little to conceal his biological gender and create the illusion of a real woman or, at least, of some sort of womanliness. Neither João’s diegetic audience nor the film’s audience is meant to read him as a man who feels any kind of discomfort with his body. The way his semi-naked, muscular body is worshipped by the camera as he comes onstage leaves very little space to think of him as a transgender subject. As

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the sequence progresses, the way the camera cuts between medium shots of João to medium shots of Tabu, visually contrasts the types of transgenderism embedded in these characters. Tabu is presented entirely as a woman with his very feminine hairstyle and the dress and pearls he wears to further emphasise this femininity, whereas João is depicted in an androgynous way, his face covered by a sequined hat, bare-chested and wearing a multi-coloured, side split skirt. This in turn evidences the director’s desire to posit the male protagonist as part of a discourse of ambigusexuality (Mendès-Leite, 1993) rather than transgenderism. It could be argued that João is, perhaps, feminised through the objectification of being-looked-at-ness (Mulvey, 1985) provided by the camera. However, such a hypermasculine body disavows any feminine reading of his sexual persona. The film is reluctant to present João as a woman who is trapped in the wrong biological gender, and instead presents the protagonist as the sort of hypermasculine subject who can cross-dress without putting into question his own masculinity (although his homosexuality is never questioned or concealed in the film). Even though at the beginning of the film João shows signs of fetishist envy towards females (a point discussed later), he then proceeds to use his own body as an instrument through which to externalise his social anger rather than his inner femininity. In other words, his body disrupts the conventions of (hetero)normativity at the level of his sexual orientation rather than his gender identity. Even his voice undergoes no change during this process of femaling; this is a man in some sort of carnivalesque cross-dressing rather than a self-perceived woman surfacing beyond a man’s body. Similar to the previous films, rather than being a transvestite, João’s performance corresponds more to notions of the drag queen and, as Carole-Anne Tyler points out “the humor in drag shows is aggressive and depends on such distancing effects, which are achieved by the reconfiguration of the positions of subject/ object, active/passive, and even voyeur/exhibitionist as the woman is revealed to be phallic” (1991: 44). João is not only phallic because he has a penis, but because he does not respond to stereotypical

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notions of bichas or travestis. As James Green asserts, Madame Satã became a mythical figure who “subverted the popular image of the passive and helpless homosexual” (2000: 88). Although he self-identified as a bicha, as has been extensively suggested (Green, 2003 & 2000), the difference between João and other bichas resides in the fact that he is feared by many for his outbursts of violence and his ability to kill those who attacked him. The film is so preoccupied with hypermasculinising João that it contradicts not only the diegetic information provided about him but also the historical facts surrounding the real character. In the opening sequence João is being charged for being a “passive pederast”, yet the only sex scene in the whole film shows João fucking his lover, one which is worth recounting in detail to show the way João’s hypermasculine body never allows its bearer to fulfil his travesti and bicha identity. As the lovers start making out, Renatinho (Felipe Marquez) plays an active role during the act, shown through a low angle, medium shot of his strong, muscular white body handling João. The camera then zooms in as Renatinho pushes his lover’s head backwards whilst licking his face, once again making it clear that he is the one in control. João appears to give himself to his lover and enjoys this position of sexual submission. Moments later João is finally undressed by his lover who then proceeds to lie on top of him naked before a medium close-up shows Renatinho thrusting his body against his lover’s. The eroticism of this sequence is further emphasised by the harsh glare from the light that illuminates the lovers, whilst the camera pans over João’s chest and arms as he grabs the bars of the headboard of his bed and prepares himself to submit (one could only assume anally/passively) to his lover. However, at the last minute, it is João who turns his lover round and fucks him, captured in a long shot of João’s body on top of his lover’s which is now being anally penetrated. This turn of events becomes rather contradictory when considering that João has always behaved in a feminine and subservient way around Renatinho, thus reaffirming his position as the bicha in the relationship.

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The tension between the faithful portrayal of the historical character and the director’s intention not to contravene audience’s expectation of the hypermasculine protagonist is once again revealed through Green’s words when he declares that “Satã was proud of his ability to wield a knife and win a fight, two marks of a malandro’s bravery and virility. Yet he openly admitted that he liked to be anally penetrated, a sexual desire that was socially stigmatized and the antithesis of manliness represented by the penetrating knife blade” (2000: 90). This incongruence between João’s assumed sexual identity and his role during sex is also evidenced in the conversation he and his lover have before sex, and in which João asks Renatinho if he is looking for “uma moça como eu” [a girl like me]. By referring to himself in the feminine, he ratifies his position as a woman or at least being regarded as such, yet he obliterates this transvestitic femininity through his decision to play the active role in the sexual act. Aïnouz is aware of the reluctance of his audience to identify with a male protagonist who is anally penetrated because, somehow, this would imply an acceptance by male audiences of the pleasures provided by the anus and/ or anal sex. As Prieur points out in her analysis of the symbolic significance of penetration in Latin American popular culture, “the ass is the place where even a male body might be threatened, might be opened – thus resembling a female body” (2001: 96). It is as if every attempt on João’s part to become a woman is annihilated by his hypermasculine body, a body that exercises control over his own sexual persona, and that Aïnouz is reluctant to show as a passive/submissive recipient of desire or even as an entity that tries to emulate femaleness. It is evident that it is the director who is adamant in showing him as a transgender figure since, as Lisa Shaw points out, “the director’s desired effect was that of an ‘enigmatic figure that plays with masculinity and femininity’, and not a drag queen or a transvestite. He sought to depict a man whose identity could not be defined in conventional terms” (2007: 96), though there is no clear evidence that Satã’s (the real historical figure) ultimate goal was to offer such an ambivalent portrayal of his own

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gendered self, especially since, as previously pointed out, he never saw himself as anything but a bicha or travesti. Even when he tries to imitate the effeminacy of his mistress (in the cabaret where he has a temporary job) he fails to behave in a believable womanlike fashion. João’s fascination with Vitória (Renata Sorrah) diverts attention from his own desires to become a woman, whilst it places more emphasis on his desire to become a star. João’s voyeuristic pleasure seems to derive more from seeing Vitória onstage and imitating her, than embracing his self-perceived gender identity. Once again the audience is left to wonder whether it is the flamboyance and glitziness of Vitória’s performance that fascinates João, and in which glamorised images are falsified in order to heighten or even to idealise those who depict such images by playing with the desires of the spectator since, as Homi Bhabha suggests “beauty and sexuality are desirable exactly to the extent that they are idealised and unattainable” (1994: 179). Nonetheless, his voyeuristic fascination continues later on in the film when, after the show, he helps Vitória to undress and, as she removes her necklaces and makeup, we see him kneeling beside her in a position of both submission and jealous admiration – further stressed by a low angle camera – because she possesses what he lacks, that is a vagina. In this way João participates in a jealous and voyeuristic act of admiring Vitória getting rid of the very elements that would be pivotal to constructing his own femaleness, which incites a type of vaginal envy because she does not need such elements to ratify her femaleness. João fails to embrace the type of transvestism that, as Garber points out, introduces a category crisis in which there is “a failure of definitional distinction, a borderline that becomes permeable, that permits of border crossings from one (apparently distinct) category to another” (1997: 16). The film neglects to offer in João a transvestitic subject whose body fully erases his masculine traits in order to create a copy of a feminine original that would allow him to be read and regarded as a woman. Instead, he creates an androgynous presentation that does not respond to the idea of the travesti, or even of bicha, as

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understood in Brazilian culture (Silva, 1993; Parker, 1998; Kulick, 1998) and to which he openly subscribes. Even though there is a category of crisis provoked by the protagonist’s androgynous presentation of the self, this crisis is not a gender crisis but a definitional crisis, since the audience is not presented with a clear gender category that can be easily assigned to him. Transvestism is, by no means, a fixed notion, and there are many different ways in which transvestites express their perceived gender identity (see Butler, 1993; Fernández, 2004; Suthrell, 2004), yet it is obvious that Aïnouz finds it hard to allow his male protagonist to look too ambivalent, and the audience to wonder what the real nature of his gender identity is. If the historical character’s ambivalence lay in the contradiction between his presentation of the self and his social attitude, that is bicha versus malandro, then it is striking and rather incongruous that, as Shaw points out, “on screen, however, we see only a macho and virile active man who anally penetrates his lover” (2007: 95). Although Shaw also sees in João a man who “can confidently adopt an alternative feminized identity, thus representing a fluid notion of sexual identity that transcends the contemporary ‘real’ man/fresco (fairy) paradigm” (95), this ability to show the fluidity of the protagonist’s gender identity remains unscreened in the film. João’s gender fluidity is contrived by Aïnouz in the way he masculinises his protagonist, also evidenced by the costumes worn by João in his second public appearance as Satã since, as Shaw highlights, “Aïnouz […] rejected an earlier version of this costume, which featured a feminine, midriff-revealing top of the type favoured by Carmen Miranda in her musicals” (96). This is all the more inaccurate since, as pointed out by Green (2000) as well as Paezzo (1972), it is common knowledge that João in fact became Madame Satã after winning a transvestite contest during carnival festivities where he wore a costume inspired by Cecil B. de Mille’s Madame Satan. What is striking is that, if the director set out to present a character whose gender identity was fluid and multiple and that broke with the established norms of heteronormativity, it seems contradictory that he needed to use João’s semi-naked,

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muscular and masculine body to achieve it. It cannot be denied that the director accurately presents João as a figure who is conscious of his own efforts to become an icon. Nonetheless his iconicity fails to fulfil any transgender expectations associated with the real character, in spite of all the references (by him and those around him) to his feminine persona.

Conclusion The idea of the femaling ritual, whether it be applying make-up, wrapping bodies with foam and rubber to create “feminine protuberances”, injecting silicone or oil into a body, or ultimately cutting dicks off (sex change), is not only a commonplace story for most transgender people, but it is the moment when they finally attain, to a lesser or greater extent, the feminine quality(ies) their bodies have denied them. None of the films discussed in this chapter seem preoccupied with exploring the psychological processes experienced by the transvestite protagonists as a result of their desire to create a “believable” feminine persona. “Fashioning the body”, that is the concealment of all gendered masculine traits through the acquisition and/or re-creation of gendered female features, and that Prieur (1998) and Parker (1998) describe as an essential part of the process of femaling, never materialises in these films as the presentation of the self for the protagonist cross-dressers always allows for their masculine traits to show through their alleged female personae. It is clear that the directors feel the need to justify cross-dressing practices outside any discourse of gender nonconformity, and believe that audiences will more readily accept such practices if they are to evoke femaleness as part of a theatrical performance. Although all the protagonists identify as homosexual and even self-identify as female, their incursion into cross-dressing responds more to a need to offer a laughable and/or entertaining version of femininity as part of an onstage performance. Therefore, these subjects perform a performance of gender, that is to say their performance of femaleness is read by the people around them as a

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satirised imitation of womanliness from a man who does not see himself as a woman (regardless of his sexual orientation); thus their cross-dressing does not have the ultimate intention of externalising an inwardly-felt gender identity. Another issue that remains unaddressed by the three directors is the problem of the disfigured mirror stage (with all its Lacanian resonance) when the transvestite realises that he is the lack. As Pancrazio suggests, “the figure that appears in the mirror is not only the other, but it is the other who becomes the self ” (2004: 17), yet in order for the transvestite to attain this self, he must see his body “mutilated” by lipsticks and other cosmetics that will help to conceal his masculine self and allow a feminine one to emerge. However, none of the films makes any direct references to this part of the femaling process or indeed analyses the female sexual persona of the transvestites. The film directors, in an attempt to avoid destabilising the basis of Latin American sexuality, present transvestism from what is arguably a pro-machista point of view, that is to say the transvestitic practices shown in their films mock the desire to emulate femininity by presenting cross-dressers as cheap copies of womanliness. If, as Foster suggests, the body of lesbigay Latin American films intends to raise a voice for “those gay lives [that] were told despite homophobic restrictions in the form of official, casual, and self-imposed censorship and […] have accomplished in large measure the destruction of the codes of silence” (2003, xii), then the work of these directors is disappointing in its portrayal of accurate transvestitic Latin American experiences. In short, a close look at such characters fails to present these transvestites as sexual subjects for whom “los actos corporales reprimidos, en cuanto perversos y transgresores, adquieren dimensiones significativas, no sólo por ofrecer oposición a las domesticaciones y vigilancias del poder domesticador, sino por abrirles nuevos caminos a los centrípedos y nómadas deseos que expresan un mundo muy diferente” [repressed corporeal acts, as long as they are perverse and transgressive, acquire great dimensions not only by offering opposition to domestication and vigilance to domesticating powers, but also by opening new

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ways to the centipedes and nomad desires that express a different world] (Díaz 2003, 31). Furthermore, since two of the films are based on texts that deal explicitly with transvestism and the last is based on a real-life historical figure who was also famous for being a travesti, it would be rather simplistic to see these, as Vek Lewis suggests, as “films that are primarily about Latin American forms of gender homoeroticism” (2011: 104). Such a view would not only be detrimental to the politics of transvestitic practices that the originals set out to speak about/for, but also to equate gendered homoeroticism with a form of transvestitic castration in which transvestism is regarded as a lesser expression of same-sex desire. In stark contrast to the transvestite characters presented in the previous three films (in spite of being the films’ protagonists), in María Novaro’s Danzón (Mexico, 1991) Susy, the transvestite character played by Tito Vansconcelos, is presented as the sort of cross-dresser who understands his masquerading of femininity as the best tool of dissent to visually fight against a heteronormative system that rejects her10 assumed gender identity. The fact that, in order to gain visibility in the realm of heteropatriarchal society, she has to justify her cross-dressing as part of an onstage performance does not belittle her (and by extension the director’s) understanding of transvestism as the mechanism through which she manifests her felt gender identity. Even when Susy is no longer dressed as a woman, she does not stop engaging in the psycho-sexual process of male femaling that not only makes her aware that her biologically gendered self is masculine, but also that her femaled, clothed body becomes the way to resist patriarchy, and provide a visually economic way to emphasise her felt femaleness. Unlike the transvestite characters in the previous films, Susy uses dress as the visible envelope for her self and, as Joanne Eicher and Mary Ellen Roach-Higgins suggest following Davis, “serves as a visual metaphor for identity” (1993: 37). However, appearing dressed as a man does not change her assumed gender identity, as can be seen in the scene in which Julia (María Rojo) tries to force Susy to embody her masculinity because she is dressed as so. When Julia tries to

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teach her the danzón (a traditional dance), she decides to teach her the man’s role (a decision that spectators presume originates from Susy’s off-drag appearance). Julia remarks that Susy (interestingly spectators never learn Susy’s male name) should hold her as a man would so she can “sienta que me agarra un hombre” [feel that I’m being grabbed by a man]. However, Susy replies “enséñame como mujer para que te entienda” [teach me as if I was a woman so I can understand]. It is clear that Susy feels uncomfortable playing the masculine role during the danzón since she feels she cannot engage with the mental process of assuming a masculine identity during this highly sexualised dancer because she regards “himself ” as a woman. By this stage in the narrative it is clear that Susy has “clothed” her brain and has assumed a female gender identity regardless of what she wears as, for her, clothes are no longer the clue and passport to what Suthrell terms “passing through forbidden (and therefore exotic) portals into the world of the opposite” (1995: 08). The three films discussed here arguably fail to offer an understanding of the moment of transvestitic mirroring in which the transvestite realises that the image reflected in the mirror is the sexual Other, that eventually becomes the self. For instance, when Julia meets Susy after the show, as the camera pans left to a medium shot of her various wigs and finally to Susy sitting at the dresser applying more makeup, the audiences realise that although she is only half made up because she has no wig on, there is no space to question her assumed gender identity and even suggest she is a man in drag and not a transvestite. In fact, it is Julia who seems bemused by the overt display of femininity reigning in Susy’s changing room and is encouraged to “curiosear, ponerte algo, pintarte. Lo que quieras” [satisfy your curiosity, wear something, put makeup on. Whatever you want]. Susy, unlike her film counterparts, does not use her cross-dressing, as Keith McNeil points out in his analysis of drag performance, “toward effecting catharsis, which draws its motivation force and salience from representing, exaggerating, and playing with the incongruities between gendered cultural models and actual experience” (1999: 361). Instead, she is aware of the extent of

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her own femininity and is willing to share her femininity with Julia. The other moment of femaling ritual and transformation sees Susy instigating the emergence of Julia’s sexual femininity by teaching her what makeup best exalts her feminine beauty. The mirror stage that remains unexplored in the previous films is now addressed to contest the idea that femininity is innate and natural to biologically gendered women, and instead shows that Susy’s femininity is sufficiently feminine to be shared by/with other women. Her femininity seems to echo that of the character Selena in Mayra Santo’s novel Sirena Selena vestida de pena (2000), and of which Efraín Barradas points out, “aquí se plantea la posibilidad de un mundo donde los roles sexuales no sean impuestos y que, a la vez, sean fluctuantes. Esta meditación, de tonos utópicos, propone identidades situacionistas que rompen con el esencialismo tradicional” [here, the possibility of a world in which sexual roles are not forced upon individuals and where such roles can be alternated is suggested. This meditation, with utopian tones, proposes situationist identities that break with an essential traditionalism] (2003: 60). Barradas proposes that the different visual strategies that construct femininity, as understood in the West within a discourse based on the idea of beauty and glamour, are better understood by the transvestite because his re-creation of femininity has been carefully analysed and studied so as to offer an accurate copy of what he considers the original. Novaro’s portrayal of transvestism also contests the idea of transvestism in the Third World as an imitation of a First World original. With Susy, she challenges the idea that the transgressive capacity of transvestism is expressed through masquerading and parody. Wigozki (2004), Garber (1993) and Richard (2004) regard the masquerading of femininity depicted by the transvestite as the entity that articulates a discourse of transvestitic excess that makes fun of a Latin American identity that is established through impositions, copies and imitations. Nelly Richard’s understanding of Latin American transvestism seems to demonise all Latin transvestites for their lack of originality, and in turn she also sees transvestite discourse as a metaphor for the Latin American imaginary,

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La hiperalegorización de la identidad como máscara que realiza el travesti pintado desenmascara la vocación latinoamericana del retoque. Retoque de la falta de lo propio (por el déficit de originalidad que marca las culturas secundarias como culturas de la reproducción) mediante la sobremarca cosmética de lo “ajeno”. Vista desde el centro, la copia periférica es el doble rebajado, la imitación desvalorizada de un original que goza de la plusvalía de ser referencia metropolitana. Pero vista desde si misma, esa copia es también una sátira postcolonial de cómo el fetichismo primermundista proyecta en la imagen latinoamericana representaciones falsas de originariedad y autenticidad (la nostalgia primitivista del continente virgen) que Latinoamérica vuelve a falsificar en una caricatura de si misma como Otro para complacer la demanda del otro [the hyper-alegorisation of an identity, as a mask that embraces a transvesty, shows a Latin American predilection for retouching. Retouching of unfinished things (resulting from a deficit in originality that is characteristic of secondary cultures as cultures of reproduction) through a strange cosmetic mark. Seen from its own centre, the peripheral copy is a reduced copy, a devalued imitation of an original that is appreciated as a metropolitan reference. Yet, seen from within, that copy is also a postcolonial satire on how a First-wordly fetishism projects false representations of originality and authenticity (the primitive nostalgia of the Virgin Continent) on Latin American images that Latin America falsifies again as a caricature of itself as an Other to please the demands of others] (68).

Novaro’s Susy challenges the notions of a transvestitic imitation of a western original, as she presents herself as a very distinctive woman with a very strong sense of national identity. To believe that there is such a thing as an original version and a copy version of femininity is rather reductionist towards transvestites as it implies that no real gender identity could emerge in the said societies where “copies” are believed to circulate. In the film, Susy pays tribute, through her performance in the cabaret, to Ana María Fernández who was one of the first female singers discovered by Agustín Lara and whose songs always paid homage to the region of Veracruz. It 163

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is interesting how Susy utilises this artist as both her muse, and more importantly, the object to imitate. Susy’s decision to embody Fernández’s exuberance, sexuality and femininity cannot be regarded as her desire to imitate a type of femininity that is foreign to Latin Americans (trannies or women). There is a clear adherence to regional and national values, as well as the type of femininity that circulates in the country’s national imaginary. This is evidenced in the second instance of mirroring in the film in which Susy decides to give Julia’s face a makeover, and teach her how to bring her inner femininity to the surface of her own body. She knows what type of woman Julia is as she calls her “mujer verano” [summer woman] whilst also recognising that she is “mujer otoño” [autumn woman], a different type of woman altogether. Julia’s face is shown through a close-up of her reflection in the mirror as Susy applies her makeup, and whilst she looks both inquisitively and appreciatively at her own reflection, as if re-discovering who she really is or who she could (want to) be. As Julia sees herself in the mirror a second time (still via close-up of her face), she is about to protest against being too heavily made up when she is cut short by Susy who asks her “¿Tienes miedo de parecer puta o de gustarle a los hombres?” [are you scared of looking like a slut or just being fancied by men?]. Julia appears to reconsider and enjoys the idea of awakening her sexualised femininity. This is further reinforced when she undoes her hair and lets it fall down the sides of her face. However, even then Susy intervenes to put a flower in her hair to accentuate her look. As spectators witness the creation of the newly re-feminised Julia, the camera zooms out from her face onto a cut-out figurine of Ana María Fernández stuck on Susy’s mirror. In this way, the audience is aware of a cross-generational transvestitic investment in which the sexuality and femininity of the 1930s singer has been transvested onto Susy who, in turn, has transvested it onto Julia. Finally, it is possible to speculate that the main reason Danzón has been so effective and accurate in depicting transvestism, as the externalisation of an inwardly felt gender identity, resides in the fact that the film and its director are looking at being a feminine Other

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from within. As Norma Iglesias Prieto suggests following Hershfield (1996) the film “quebranta las formas tradicionales de representación, es decir, favorece relaciones de subjetividad ajenas a las promovidas por las formas de significación dominante” [breaks traditional forms of representation, that is to say, it favours different relations of subjectivity to those promoted by dominant forms of signification] (2004). Novaro knows exactly what it is like to be rejected, or at least undermined, in a society that favours masculinity and regards women as commodities and second-class citizens. Unlike Ripstein, Barreda and Aïnouz, she manages to break with traditional forms of representation and substitutes all masculine subjects and their social/sexual roles with feminine ones, in a film that narrativises and represents the subjectivity and the social reality of women and female subjects as they experience it. In a film that revolves around the creation and importance of female networks of solidarity, it offers the opportunity of membership to the transvestite(s) within such social dynamics. Susy is diegetically incorporated into the group of women who are regarded as socio-sexual outcasts, such as the female prostitute who lives in the hotel where Julia stays. Susy is, to a certain degree, in the same position of social and sexual subordination experienced by other women in machista societies. Julia’s farewell letter to Susy demonstrates that she can now claim the feminine space she has always sought as an extreme close-up of the letter shows Julia changing the o in bueno to an a for buena, visual recognition that Susy’s femininity has nothing to do with his biological gender but with her assumed gender identity. It is not suggested that only female directors are capable of offering a fair portrayal of transvestism and transgender subjects. However, a full understanding of transgenderism can only come when a director, something the previous directors fail to achieve, decides not to “miradas de afuera para adentro, sino de adentro hacía afuera” [look from the outside in, but instead look from the inside out] (Iglesias Prieto 2004: 03).

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6

No Machos Were Harmed in the Making of This Film Defining queer masculinity through gay pornography in the work by Mecos Films The debate over pornography as a site that promotes the objectification of women, as well as of gay men who are regarded as passive, that is effeminised, has been paramount in the negative criticism of this form of cinema amongst scholars for decades (Dworkin, 1981; Stoltenberg, 1992; Crawford, 1996). In defence of pornography it could be argued that such readings tend to strip individuals, both porn stars and consumers, of their ownership of desire. The stigmatisation of consumers as deviant, as lacking moral values and as consumers of trash culture, deems pornography, at least in the realm of normative sexuality, as texts that lack any positive influence in contemporary society. By the same token, within such pornographic narratives, the relationship between penetrator and penetrated is read within a power dynamic in which the latter is always regarded as someone who submits him/herself to some form of hegemonic oppression. Similarly, other academics argue that the contents and scenarios of the fantasies that are portrayed in such films promote “violence, cruelty, degradation, dehumanization, 167

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and exploitation” (Kendall and Funk, 2003). S&M and bondage scenarios, as well as other arguably non-traditional sexual scenarios, are regarded as corrupt and devious, and participants as sexually deviant. In relation to male queer cultures, some may argue that gay male pornography may foster feelings of frustration and anxiety amongst viewers by idealising muscularity as a common trait of the “average” gay man and by suggesting that the “average” gay man has an insatiable sexual appetite (Harris, 1997; Signorile, 1997). Finally, some theorists have pointed out that gay male pornography presents a spectacle of ethnicity when depicting racial groups that are not Caucasian, something that could also be said of its straight counterpart. For instance, the work of British-Canadian porn director Kristen Bjorn has shown the success of interracial pornography, and even though Joe A Thomas observes that “the success of Bjorn’s videos proved that there is a market for racially integrated gay pornography” (2000: 55), it could be argued that this has been done at the expense of the troping and exoticising of non-Caucasian types. Coloured men tend to be depicted as sexual beings who are meant to show sexual instinct in its raw state; they are racial Others that become the fantasy of their ex-coloniser in their position of colonial and ethnic supremacy. This idea echoes that of João Carlos Rodrigues who asserts that Bjorn “apresenta exemplos típicos do Negão enquanto símbolo homossexual, com pênis de dimensões enormes e apetites equivalentes” [presents typical examples of black men as homosexual symbols, with penises of huge dimensions and equivalent sexual appetites] (2001: 41). Bjorn uses coloured men who are the encapsulation of an imagined hypermasculinity and who are always regarded as active participants in sex. Such racially-typed characters are regarded as products of mass-consumption of an audience accustomed to racial tropes that both sexually exoticise and culturally degrade such individuals. Claire N. Wescott asserts that this is achieved as “Bjorn’s filmic creations, whilst still being ‘exotic,’ are not, on a relative scale, all that different from what his viewers target know […] Bjorn has endeavoured to create something different, but not too different,

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for his mainstream North American [and by extension western] audience” (2004: 194). As argued elsewhere (Subero, 2010 and 2010a,) the kind of gay male pornographic narratives that have been constructed in Latin America have challenged the stereotypical images of Latin(o) men that are prevalent in Anglo-European pornography. Such films offer scenarios that disavow the notion of racial and cultural subordination that is paramount in most pornographic features made by Anglo-European directors, and in which Latin(o) men engage in homosexual sex as a result of their conditions of poverty and cultural emasculation. Instead, such films reaffirm national identity by borrowing elements of their own national folklore or their gay (sub)culture. Such scenarios make it evident that homosexuality cannot be viewed as a homogenous experience across cultures. These films have also permitted a realignment of the notion of gay aesthetics, namely racial type preference, whereby Indo-mestizo subjects are regarded as a valid erotic choice for the viewer in ways that both reject post-colonial paradigms of white supremacy (following Bhabha, 1994 and Fanon, 1986), as well as stereotypical images of Latin(o) racial Others (Ortiz, 1994). Indo-mestizo porn stars are not used to fuel the fantasies of Caucasian audiences, nor are Indo-mestizo audiences assumed to reject their own ethnic types as valid erotic choices within their own sexual imaginary. By the same token, and as has been argued elsewhere, “the pornographic features that have been made and released in the continent in the last few years have permitted to document the changes in the politics of male-to-male eroticism, as well as to offer a more positive representation of male homosexuality in the absence of a body of documentation that permits one to trace the history of Latin American homosexuality” (Subero 2012: 214). From this point of departure, this chapter will offer an analysis of the way that queer masculinity is constructed in the Mexican gay imaginary through the pornographic features that are produced by the Mexican porn house Mecos Films. Unlike the other works of fiction cinema that have been analysed in this study, pornography

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offers a more immediate relation to social reality, since it relies on the current trends and sexual tastes of what is arguably the Mexican gay (sub)culture. At the core of this chapter is the notion that the gay pornography filmed by these companies intends to be a true reflection of the current changes that the gay (sub)culture and the gay community are undergoing as part of a current process of queer globalisation (resulting from the global commercialisation of queer culture). Arguably, gay pornography promotes what Jeffrey G Sherman (1995) regards as sexual integrity, that is an act of self-realisation that permits the individual the integration of all aspects of his own persona into a fully integrated and functional being. He argues that “sexual exhilaration in the context of a mutually desired sexual connection may present the only circumstance in which one can achieve a complete submersion of self in another’s being, transcending the leaden constraints of political obligation and rational discourse” (1995: 670). He argues that sex, regardless of whether it is practiced in private or recorded for some form of consumption, is an integral part of human sexuality and one of the very few self-affirming forms of discourse of homosexuality found in contemporary culture. In addition, Murat Aydemar argues that the cum shot in gay male pornography can be regarded as an act of a staged self-reflexivity that evidences the constructedness of queer masculinity. For Aydemar “the cum shot becomes a separate, self-conscious and highly staged performance” (2007: 126), and this in turn shows the changes within queer culture at a specific moment in time. Furthermore, pornography can be seen as incorporating elements of a particular national queer identity in ways that legitimise such elements within the (sub)culture. In societies where homosexuality remains at the interstice of heterohegemonic culture, or even worse stripped from any form of social citizenship, pornography becomes the medium par excellence to allow gay men to recognise and identify those codes and practices that constitute their own socio-sexual reality. Many of the narratives in the gay pornography analysed here are rendered to contribute to a type of gay performative, as a kind of

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homogeneous sexual identity in which, as Homi Bhabha suggests, “the scraps, patches and rags of daily life must be repeatedly turned into the signs of a coherent national culture, whilst the very act of the narrative performance interpellates a growing circle of national subjects” (1994: 209). The work by this porn house provides a form of interpretation of a national gay (sub)culture and how such a (sub) culture is constructed, assimilated and reproduced within the wider spectrum of heteronormative society. As Dyer rightly points out, pornography “does help to define the forms of the exciting and desirable available in a given society at a given time” (2002: 187). Alongside its function as an exponent of queer reality at a specific moment in history, the pornographic work by this company also permits to deconstruct what could arguably be regarded as “coloured queer masculinity” in ways that challenge cultural constructions of non-Caucasian ethnic identities within queer culture. The narrative construction(s) of coloured queer masculinity found in the pornography made in the US and Europe tends to depict coloured gay men, as has previously been suggested, as extremely butch and muscular, very well endowed and predominantly the active participant in sex. Conversely, the films made by this porn house show a wider variety of gay men who do not necessarily respond to such stereotypical views. The inclusion of camp men (pluma), as well as men who show passive preference during sex, permits to posit Latin American queer culture in a position whereby machismo is no longer regarded as a template for queer masculinity. In short, the films made by this company will be regarded as clear testimony of the changes within queer culture and the way that queer masculinity is constructed in the popular imaginary.

Mecos Films Founded in Mexico in 2004 by Gerardo Delgado (aka El Diablo), the company defines itself as “the first Mexican porno producers with a defined project of quality, proud to show the variety of Mexican men, without fear to show our culture and hotness” 171

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(mecosfilms.com 2011). As has been discussed in detail elsewhere (Subero, 2010 and 2010a) the first two feature films by this company, La Putiza and La Verganza, became immediate successes after the former won the Best Screenplay and Best Movie at the Barcelona Heat Gay Film Festival in 2004. Both films cleverly borrow elements of queer Mexican (sub)culture, from masked wrestlers to mariachi players, to create films that are relevant to a national gay community. Furthermore, viewers can perceive a sense of gay Mexicanness because the films exploit elements of Mexican folklore and national gay iconography – for instance, the use of El Santo films – as inspiration for features and leitmotifs. This can be clearly seen in the words of Alvaro Cueva (2005) who states in his review of the film, La Putiza (and something that could easily be said of its sequel La Verganza), “rinde homenaje a las viejas películas de luchadores y que satiriza algunos elementos de la iconografía popular de la nación, desde las barajas de la lotería hasta los clásicos calendarios de barrio pasando por las telenovelas, las historietas, la música y los juegos infantiles” [[The film] pays homage to the old wrestling films whilst it also satirises certain elements of the national popular iconography such as old lottery cards, neighbourhood calendars, soap operas, comics, music and children’s games]. However, for the purpose of analysis, the remainder of this chapter will concentrate on the series Selección Mexicana 1, 2 and 3 (2006, 2008, 2009) and the feature film Corrupción Mexicana (2010), as they evidence how queer masculinity is defined and constructed within the popular imaginary of the national queer (sub)culture. This analysis will demonstrate that the decision to favour men who do not fit the stereotype favoured by the country’s media, whiter or fair skin types as evidenced in most soap operas, has at its core a challenge of the kind of white absolutism that has dominated the social imaginary in the country and that regards its aboriginal ancestry as a sign of underdevelopment and backwardness. This is evident in the words of Bonfil Batalla who rightly asserts, “the colonized finally accepted internally the inferiority that the colonizers attributed to them, renounced their own identity, and assumed another and different one” (1996: 20).

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Similar to the argument that followed the analysis of Julián Hernández’s work, the work by Mecos Films is testament to a historical point in which the gay (sub)culture reclaims its own heritage (both as mestizos and aboriginal people) through the eroticisation of the Indo-mestizo body. The series Selección Mexicana 1, 2 and 3 follows the same “reality TV” format, that is unscripted, like films made by companies such as SeanCody and Randy Blue in the US. Interestingly, and unlike the work of other porn houses, these companies rely on much younger porn stars (usually men aged between 18–25) and lack any type of sexual scenario as preamble to the sex on screen. Most scenes start with an unseen director chatting to the men who will be engaging in sex. During these conversations, the director (El Diablo in most scenes) talks to the performers about their own gay lives and issues such as their coming out, their first sexual experience, their sexual preferences

Figure 11 Gerardo Delgado (El Diablo) on set directing in one of his films © Mecos Films 173

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and fantasies, among others. The company’s ethos is to exalt images of male Mexicanness that have been ignored previously in other media and filmic accounts that feed the national popular imaginary. As Redaccion Anodis points out in relation to Mecos’ work, “los productores desean mostrar a la comunidad gay que los mexicanos son hombres guapos, cargados de un erotismo y sensualidad única” [the producers wish to show the gay community that Mexican men are handsome, charged with a unique eroticism and sensuality] (anodis.com, 2007). They achieve this by naturalising the participants’ ethnic background rather that exoticising it. Delgado makes it clear that the company is interested in “mostrar todos los estereotipos de chavos” [showing all the male stereotypes] (anodis. com, 2007), as a clear response to the way that other companies are seen not to favour Latin(o) types and that when they do they are heavily troped. Instead, Mecos Films attempts to naturalise the Mexican archetype. This process of naturalisation occurs in two distinctive ways. On the one hand, the relationship between ethnic origin and sexual preference that is paramount in most Anglo-European porn is challenged since the roles of inserter and insertee are not regulated by the participant’s skin colour. In most pornographic features made in Anglo-European countries, coloured men are portrayed as dominant and hyper-masculine and almost always take the active role in sex. As Claire Westcott has argued, in such films “masculinity itself has become an attractive form of ‘otherness’ to the gay viewer” (2004: 191). However, in features by Mecos Films there are as many participants who play the active role, as there are those who play a passive one. Nothing in their physiognomy encourages the viewer to assume that the person on screen will play a pre-determined role during the sex act. The feature films made by this company disavow the notion of cinemachismo articulated by Sergio de la Mora that seems “to identify the particular self-conscious form of national masculinity and patriarchal ideology articulated via the cinema and also vigorously promoted by the post-revolutionary State as official ideology” (2006: 02). Although

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Figure 12 Diamante (Kankún García) and El Master (El Puma) as protagonists of the adult saga La Putiza and La Verganza © Mecos Films

it would seem commonsensical to believe that gay pornography would, by its very own nature, challenge machismo as a form of patriarchal sexism, a quick look at pornographic productions depicting Latin(o) men in other countries would testify otherwise. By the same token, the insertee is neither vilified, nor feminised, a particularity that is absent from Anglo-European gay pornography in which there is a latent relationship whereby coloured men are utilised to satisfy the fantasies of their fairer-skinned counterparts. The portrayal of masculine looking/acting Indo-mestizo men in Mecos’ films permits to question the notion that “los homosexuales (los jotos) existen y sólo se les concibe como afeminados y travestis” [gay men (faggots) exist and are only conceivable as effeminate and transvesties] (Monsivais 2004: 106). On the other hand, poverty and underdevelopment are not portrayed as an inherent part of the social makeup of the participants. In most Anglo-European pornography, and as Wescott (2004) has 175

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rightly signalled, coloured men are presented in a context of alterity since they are often depicted as straight men who end up engaging in gay sex as a result of an inexplicable lack of available female partners, professionally handicapped – manual labourers or unemployed – and belong to a low socio-economic stratus, so engaging in gay sex becomes a source of income or a way to gain favours from a wealthier, whiter person. Not surprisingly, and as Christopher Ortiz points out, “the locations in which the scenarios unfold are, to name only a few, prisons, warehouses, restaurants, kitchens and urban areas that are defined as Chicano/Latino neighbourhoods” (1994: 84). It is impossible to escape from the fact that pornography is, ultimately, a site for glamour and fantasy. Thus, for the Western viewer, poverty and underdevelopment can be made abject through the coloured porn star in ways that offer sexual jouissance, since they are portrayed as exotic. However, what may be considered exotic to such audiences may not invite the same response from Latin(o) audiences who will reject such stereotyped readings of their own socio-sexual personae. Selección Mexicana recontextualises the geography of Latin(o) homosexuality, as portrayed in other films, by providing seemingly neutral scenarios (usually a bed or a sofa) that cannot construct the individual as pertaining to a specific social or economic stratum1. Delgado makes it clear that the men who appear in his films come from very different backgrounds and are mainly motivated by a desire to fulfil a sexual fantasy rather than to become porn stars like those in the US and Europe (since such a system is still non-existent in Latin America). As Humberto Sesma Vásquez points out “los actores porno mexicanos prácticamente trabajan por amor al arte y a su exhibicionismo. Oscilan entre los 18 y los 25 años de edad y ganan […] cinco mil pesos por escena” [Mexican porn stars do this job because they love it and because they like to be exhibitionist. They are all between 18 and 25 years of age and earn […] five thousand pesos per scene] (etcetera.com. mx, 2009). Delgado also points out that most of the men who appear in his films only do so once or twice before moving on with their lives, without any desire or attempt to become porn stars

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in the Anglo-European sense of the word. This demonstrates that pornography is not regarded by such men as a route to financial success or to overcome poverty, but as a further exploration of their own gay desires. The pornography made by this company seeks to offer Indo-mestizo and coloured gay homosexuality not only as an aesthetic, but also as a sexual alternative to the images of Latin(o) homosexuality that already circulate in the gay imaginary (via Anglo-European pornography). The Indo-mestizo gay man is presented as a valid sexual choice, someone who is not seen as an inferior Other. It could be suggested that Mecos Films has realigned the aesthetics of queer male sexuality in the Mexican gay imaginary by disavowing the sort of white eroticism (Gregory 1997, 90–99) that has prevailed in transnational and international queer narratives. Instead, the Selección Mexicana collection contributes to the construction of a homeboy aesthetic created through the assembly of key signifiers such as clothing, hair, standing and a distinct language which are all combined to create a distinguishable cultural affectation. As John Clarke notes the homeboy aesthetic “is more than the simple amalgam of all the separate elements – it derives its specific symbolic quality from the arrangement of all the elements together in one whole ensemble, embodying and expressing the group’s self-consciousness” (1976: 179). The homeboy aesthetic procured by Selección Mexicana (and something that can be easily applied to the film Corrupción Mexicana) is the fact that there is a predilection for men who are very dark skinned or aboriginal in their outlook (something which soap operas, the most consumed media in the country, tend to reject). Interestingly, the way in which Sergio de la Mora describes Pedro Infante (one of the most prominent figures of masculinity who has ever circulated in the Mexican popular imaginary) reflects the way men are portrayed in the films by Mecos since they “often represented the archetypal, post-revolutionary, not-quite-domesticated, working-class migrant from the provinces” (2006: 70). Like Infante, and as previously suggested, the type of Indo-mestizos portrayed

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in these pornographic features “signifies a departure from the dominant image of the aggressive, arrogant, criollo (Mexican-born but of ‘white’ Spanish ancestry), upper-class Mexicans” (80). Pornography as a self-reflexive site can also be regarded as a site for the articulation of a Mexican national project. Although pornography may not fit into traditional nation-building projects, it is undeniable that the films produced by this company seek to celebrate Indo-mestizo identity in an attempt to promote ethnic pride through positive identification. The re-construction of Indo-mestizo eroticism at the level of the queer nation is also evidenced in many instances in which the director has taken the porn stars to the street for a photo shoot. For instance, in one of the scenes in Selección Mexicana 3, two models are asked to pose seductively in a public park whilst passers-by see them being photographed shirtless and with their jeans or shorts tantalisingly open, revealing part of their underwear and/or crotch. By showing them “out in the public” El Diablo defies codes of sex and desire, as circulated in media and film, and literally takes these sexy national subjects to the streets to be admired by the general public (who are obviously unaware that this is the preamble to a gay porn sex scene). What is most interesting is the fact that the two models end up interacting with passers-by by waving to them and showing them their naked torsos. Such public exhibition of male eroticism (with passers-by probably unaware that this form of eroticism is necessarily gay) challenges compulsory hetero-masculinity, that is the type of masculinity that circulates in the cultural imaginary as the masculine ideal and which is perpetuated by a desire to reject, both culturally and physically, the indigenous ancestry. By exposing the models as objects of the filmic (the porn film itself) and photographic (the pictures that are taken of them) gaze, the film invites its own audience, as well as those who witnessed the shoot as it took place, to re-evaluate their own notions of masculine desirability and see such Indo-mestizo men as valid erotic subjects. It is not surprising that Gerardo Delgado explains that the way that porn stars are selected for Selección Mexicana, and other Mecos features, responds

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to a desire to show the wide variety of men that can be found within the Mexican gay scene. According to Delgado, models ought to be “mexicanos, y que en conjunto (cuerpo, cara, miembro y actitud) me gusten. Y como el mexicano es café con leche, hay quienes tienen mas café o en quienes predomina más la leche, mezclamos todo tipo de físicos, predominando los morenos, obvio” [Mexican, and that the full package (face, body, sex organ and attitude) are of my taste. And since Mexicans are like milky coffee, there are those who have more coffee and those who have more milk, we mix all types of physiques, with a clear predominance of mixed-race guys] (Facebook.com, 2010). Interestingly, the director uses the expression “white coffee” as an allegory for ethnic differentiation and to mark the different degrees of Indo-mestizoness that can be found in Mexico. Delgado’s remark recognises the lack of fixity of the notion of Indo-mestizo in Mexican society, one that does not necessarily respond to a unique type of mixed-race identity or physiognomy. Similarly, the analysis of Mecos’ latest feature Corrupción Mexicana provides a snippet into queer culture in Mexico. This film is without a doubt the best-executed by this company to date, since the cinematography and the editing surpass by far that of previous features. Unlike La Putiza and La Verganza, it does not have a lineal narrative or storyline and, instead, it is made up of a series of double vignettes. The first scene shows a couple being stopped by a policeman who coerces them into sex, and then it moves on to the couple being left alone to enjoy intercourse on their own. The next scene finds two friends chatting online, with one telling the other how he had been kidnapped the previous day (the reason why he missed their rendezvous), and how his kidnappers had fucked him. He tells his friend the kidnappers had also called his dad (a chief unionist) and made him listen on the phone whilst he was being raped, as a payback for his father’s corrupt dealings. In the last scene, a punk boy finds himself unable to control his need to piss so ends up urinating against one of the city walls. When a police officer catches him in the act, he decides to give the boy a

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taste of his own medicine (in the most literal sense) as he proceeds to piss on him and then engage in sex. Although the different vignettes are not in any way linked, it is clear that the narrative favours the notion of corruption (hence the title) as a common leitmotif in the film. From the outset, Delgado regards this movie as quintessentially Mexican since he declares “más mexicana que la corrupción… pues sólo el chile verde”2 [there’s only one thing more Mexican than corruption… green chillies] (Facebook.com, 2010). Unlike Summer Gandolf ’s Sexxxcuestro (2002) in which, as argued elsewhere (Subero, 2010a), there is a clear relationship between the ethnic origin of the film’s porn stars and the role they play within the film, that is the darker or more aboriginal they look the more the character is regarded as pertaining to a lower socio-economic stratus, Corrupción Mexicana avoids ethnic archetypes and shows Indo-mestizo stars in ways that defy ethnic codification. The obviously diverse ethnic backgrounds of the different porn stars, varying from more indigenous physiognomy (encapsulated in the figure of the naco [Chav]) to the much whiter politician whose son is kidnapped and raped, posits the film as a site of mestizaje [mixed identity] and hybridity. Even though both sites are regarded as paramount in the construction of Mexican identity, they are not exploited with the objective of creating a sense of foreignness for the national, or the international, viewer. Unlike other pornographic works in which “version[s] of ‘foreigness’ is[are] designed to be as polysemic as possible, for mobilisation at myriad sites around the world. But that polysemy must arise from both the specificities and the generalities of ethnic, racial and national embodied difference” (Cante and Restivo 2004: 116), the work by Mecos Films shows multiculturalism and multi-ethnicity as pivotal elements in the construction of queer national identity. Unlike other porn houses that are devoted to Latin(o) porn, Mecos Films’s productions are clearly made with a Latin(o) audience in mind. Such films are not made to fuel the fantasies of a gay subject that is universalised as Anglo-European and white but, instead, to respond to (and fulfil) the erotic desires of an Indo-mestizo porn

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market. As Gerardo Delgado clearly asserts, “competimos con el tipo de cachondería, tenemos un tipo de belleza latina muy diferente al cholo o brasileño que ya se ve en porno, además del acento mexicano que a mucha gente le excita, y les metemos historias interesantes o divertidas” [we compete with a unique type of horniness, we have a type of Latin beauty very different to the white Caribbean or Brazilian men already seen in porn; besides, the Mexican accent is exciting and many people like it, and we also tell interesting and funny stories] (Facebook, 2010). Moreover the type of Mexicanness that is characteristic of Mecos’ productions is not apologetic to the foreign viewer (who may be aware of the work of this porn house due to the popularity of some of the films, as well as the awards they have won) for those aspects of Mexican culture that may escape him (something that La Putiza and La Verganza avoid to a certain extent by using elements of Mexican culture that circulate in foreign imaginaries of the country). The beginning of the film is highly indexical of the Mexican nation since this is the first film that prominently features Mexico DF as a location for the action. Besides some territorial landmarks that define, to the connoisseur, the Mexican capital, there are aspects of Mexican culture such as the use of a bochito (Mexican slang to the old Volkswagen Beetle that has become an emblematic car in Mexico) as a setting for the first onscreen sexual encounter, and one that stresses the Mexicanness of the film. In this scene, the notion of the mayate (the seemingly heterosexual man who has sex with other men but regards himself as straight) is disavowed so as to favour an explicitly queer narrative that does not need to diegetically justify the star’s desire for same-sex sex through the lack of available female figures. As the bochito arrives at a traffic light in red, the camera cuts from an establishing front shot of the car to an aerial shot that zooms in and onto the car, permitting a view of the driver (through the car’s open sunroof) who is being given a blow job by his passenger. A close up of the young man performing fellatio only serves to add to the sexiness of the scene. The camera then cuts to a medium shot from outside the driver’s side of the

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car that shows him as he waits for the lights to change (still being sucked off). With the static camera positioned outside the vehicle the viewer can see another car, driven by an attractive young girl, stopping parallel to the bochito. The girl smiles seductively to the driver, and he smiles back; however, as the lights change and the camera cuts once again to an aerial shot, low angle of the blow job, the viewer is now positioned, through the camera point of view, to the inside of the girl’s car to show her disappointment at her failed attempt at seducing the bochito’s driver. It is clear that the driver does not feel the need to justify his choice of sexual partner as a result of a lack of female interest, nor does he seem interested in swapping sexual partners when a female is available. Furthermore, the muscular, masculine man who sits seductively in his car whilst getting sucked off by another man, and who is neither feminised nor made camp though visibly much younger, does not see the bodily construction of his queer masculinity as an element that contravenes Mexican machismo. This scene, like the rest of the film, stresses a relationship between power and corruption, figures of authority and machismo as a template for (queer) male masculinity. For instance, the continuation of the aforementioned scene sees the couple being stopped and searched by a policeman who ends up “forcing” them to have sex with him after discovering that the muscular man’s driving license has expired. However, rather than coercing the couple into pleasing him, whilst disregarding their own erotic/sexual pleasure, the scene creates sufficient scope for both the policeman to enjoy the sex act and to actively participate in the provision of pleasure for the couple. In fact, if anything this scene ends up being more of a threesome than a scenario of power and sexual subjugation. The policeman’s macho masculinity never seems at threat by either engaging in same-sex sex or by actively procuring to satisfy his “victims”. There seems to be nothing in this scene to suggest that the policeman regards himself as a heterosexual man or a mayate, following cultural perceptions and narratives of masculinity in Mexico (Gutmann, 2006; de la Mora, 2006), or that he sets out to exercise a form of hypermasculinity

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by degrading and humiliating his victims for being gay. In fact, the end of the threesome becomes the catalyst to a rather romantic scene between the original couple in which there is a high degree of intimacy in the form of mutual fellatio, masturbation, rimming, etc. In spite of the pronounced difference in age, ethnic origin and the fact that they are constructed as “boys of the lam”, there is an element of freedom and receptiveness to the way they engage sexually both with the policeman and just between themselves. The other men in the film seem to defy the macho codes that Spencer R Herrera highlights in his analysis of Hunger of Memory and in which “to be a macho man, one must possess the three F’s, feo, fuerte, and formal. Feo means to have rugged good looks. Fuerte here does not refer to physical strength, but to have inner strength and character. And formal, perhaps the most important, means to be steady, responsible, a good provider, constant, and a man of high seriousness” (inter-disciplinary.net, 2011). For instance, in the second scene it is the youngest and most muscular star who is kidnapped and raped. The fact that such a stud (if posited in the Anglo-American porn jargon) can be fucked by two guys who are smaller in size and build suggests that machismo is disavowed as a sexual template based on external appearance and behaviour. However, as the title of the film rightly suggests, machismo within queer culture is strongly related to issues (and in pornographic terms scenarios) of power, whilst at the same time power is regarded as intrinsically linked to corruption. It is not surprising, then, that in both the first and third scenes the viewer sees figures of power – a policeman and a national guard – using their vested power to justify their need/desire to play the inserter role. However, playing the active role during sex does not intend to feminise their sexual partners, albeit it strips them of a degree of macho power. By the same token, the kidnappers and their boss in the second scene uphold power through the guns they carry and the need to humiliate the successful politician by making him listen, on the other line of the phone, whilst his own son is raped. In this scene, it is interesting to note that it is the kidnapper’s boss (a kind of

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Godfather figure) who happens to be the fairer skinned of all the stars, whilst the politician and his son show traits that are closer to the Indo-mestizo aesthetic discussed previously. In this way, the film once again dispels the view that pornographic depictions “reduce[s] […] Chicano / Latin[o] men to easily consumed objects within an already familiar signifying system of racial and ethnic meaning” (Ortiz 1994: 85). This scene is all the more interesting because it becomes self-referential (to the porn house and one of the porn stars) whilst it also (re)produces the notions of social differentiation that have been explored in other similar porn films (see Sexxxcuestro in Subero, 2010a). In this scene an unnamed twink boy sits on his bed and browses the profile page of Mecos Films’ models as a means of sexual stimulation. As he gets turned on by the profile of Angel Fireboy the camera zooms into the laptop screen to show an instant message popping up from the model who relays to his friend the story of his kidnap and rape by some gangsters the previous day. Although, arguably, the notion of rape does not fit easily with Sherman’s ideas of good pornography, it could be suggested that, paradoxically, the kidnappers seem keen to provide the boy with pleasure, making sure he is both highly stimulated and sexually satisfied. Furthermore, the scene seems to be more concerned with the carelessness of the rich and the fact that economic power is related to moral and political corruption. Unlike the type of porn scenarios in which Latin(o) men tend to be portrayed, it is not the poor who are regarded as opportunistic or morally depraved but the rich and powerful. This is even more evident by the fact that whilst Angel Fireboy is raped, his own father is at the other end of a phone line where he is made to listen to the whole “ordeal” as a punishment for his own corrupt dealings. To stress even further the way that money becomes a corrupting element in society, rather than finding the whole scenario revolting and shocking, the father instead finds himself turned on by the noises made by his son as he is raped. It is clear that it is not the stars’ ethnic origin that determines their position of (sub)alternity within the narrative of

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the story since both Angel Fireboy and his father are clearly more Indo-mestizo than the man who ordered the kidnap and even one of the kidnappers. The film is arguably more preoccupied in pointing out how thirst for money and socio-economic climbing are corrupting elements within Mexican society and, as a result, people of a poorer or more modest background are regarded as less corrupt and more morally valuable. The film therefore avoids racially coded roles, characteristic of western pornography, and by doing so posits the film as a site of mestizaje and hybridity in Mexican culture. The film demonstrates that, as Peter Wade suggests in relation to images of Latin America mestizaje that “race mixture, as a socially recognized process, plays a role in constructing a society in which clear racial divisions and collective identities built on them are minimal” (2004: 359). What is clearly noticeable in this feature is the realignments of the notion of the erotic within queer culture, in which Mexicanness and mestizaje are not regarded as simply utopian paradigms, in terms of their harmonious integration, but as real and palpable social constructions within the Mexican queer nation. As Jeremiah Smith asserts, “pornography’s meaning is dependent upon its social context[;] in a sexually repressive culture any portrayal of the erotic is a site of contestation, especially if that particular erotic site involves a sexualized minority or a subculture based on sexual identity” (reconstruction.eserver.com, 2011). As Dyer (1994) has famously argued, gay pornography entails a level of self-reflexivity in which the pornographic feature is not only a product of mass consumption (even when most of this consumption occurs in isolation), but a reflection of the current changes in the form of the exciting and desirable within gay culture at a specific time. However, it could also be argued that pornography can be utilised to challenge and contest pre-existing sexual codes within the erotic order, that is what and who are considered sexy, hot and sexually stimulating. As such, Mecos Films could be said to foster changes within Mexican gay culture about what practices are considered sexually relevant and whose practices this may be. For

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instance, in Corrupción Mexicana the viewer is presented with the first black porn star in an attempt to further diversify the ethnic types that are considered as sexy. The fact that this black porn star also plays a policeman, departing from the stereotypical roles black men are assigned in other pornographic features or exploiting them as sexual Negros (see Bhabha, 1994), reiterates the ethos of the company to posit Indo-mestizo identity within the realm of queer culture. Although many feminists and academics, as well as more conservative people, would turn their back on the idea of pornography as an element that contributes to the construction of an imagined nation, it would be possible to argue that Corrupción Mexicana fits into this notion as the film’s use of an unapologetic authenticity (within fiction cinema) can be seen throughout the story. In most Anglo-European porn, especially that made by renowned international porn houses, there are certain aspects of the sex act itself that are omitted within pornographic narratives for being considered too gross or unsexy, thus ruining the perfection of the fantasy recreated. In Corrupción Mexicana, nonetheless, El Diablo avoids such aesthetically crafted images of gay sex when, in scenes such as the one of the rape, the camera focuses on one of the kidnappers inhaling poppers before fucking their prisoner. The same could be said of the fact that, in this same scene, the prisoner is also toe-fucked by his captors. El Diablo seems to make a film that, as Jose Muñoz asserts in relation to autoethnographic performance, “autoethnography is a strategy that seeks to disrupt the hierarchical economy of colonial images and representations by making visible the presence of subaltern energies and urgencies in metropolitan culture”3 (1995: 88). In this sense, this piece contests Alan McKee’s notion of persuasiveness to be at the core of national pornographies, since he suggests that “content”, “authenticity” and “the local” (1999: 194) are discourses that cannot be necessarily reproduced in such films. As Rich Cante and Angelo Restivo rightly point out in relation to the cultural-aesthetic specificities of gay pornography,

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It could be suggested, then, that Mexican queer male culture and gay pornography coexist in a symbiotic relationship in which pornographic fantasies are built upon the perceived experiences (through the eyes of the film director) of a real gay community. By the same token, the gay community responds to pornographic images by assimilating fantasies, practices and sexual discourses that are not acknowledged by the media (whether gay or not) and/or heteronormative society.

NO MACHOS WERE HARMED IN THE MAKING OF THIS FILM

this is not simply a question of “reality” versus “fantasy” that is mobilized for the spectator, though. For it will happen that among the sexually adventurous in the larger cities, many gay men will indeed transform themselves […] so that the spaces they actually traverse will effectively begin to conform more and more closely to that which is the proper representational ground for their own manufactured images (2004: 144)

Conclusion It could be boldly argued that the work of Mecos Films, similar to that of Julián Hernández, is the first real attempt to visually acknowledge ethnic syncretism within Mexican culture, specifically queer culture, by portraying characters and situations that are not ethnically coded. As Maxime Cervulle and Nick Rees-Roberts argue in relation to Orientalist porn, “in the context of gay subculture’s own post-colonial narratives […] Arab men are pictured as systematically active and virile, preferably aggressive and decidedly well-hung, while the white tourist occupies the passive and feminine position” (2008: 198). This could be easily said of the type of depictions of male Latin Americanness that have characterised the gay pornography made in the US and Europe in which Latin(o) men are troped as exotic and sexually animalistic. The Indo-mestizo individual is no longer made abject as a result of his ethnic background or his skin colour. This chapter has demonstrated that gay pornography can be utilised to study and evidence current changes in taste, practice and the reality of the 187

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gay community in Mexico. It argued that, of all types of fiction cinema, pornography serves as the best vehicle to register the changes that the gay subculture(s) experience(s) and the way that queer masculinity is constructed in the gay popular imaginary. The work by Mecos Films in Mexico establishes ways in which their films respond to the changes currently experienced in this country within a process of queer globalisation. The films produced by this company disavow the notion of ethnic exoticism that has been prevalent in gay male pornography in the West, whereby Latin(o) stars are troped and exoticised as hyper macho individuals whose physicality and sexual behaviour, and by extension sexual preference during sex, responds to the anxieties of an Anglo-European viewer who regards them as prototypical stallions. These films also show the differences, within their nationally specific queer culture, of the way that certain ethnic types are either idealised or rejected within the queer popular imaginary and how such preferences reflect issues, such as machismo, beyond mere taste and have more profound implications due to historical and cultural processes within such a nation. The type of pornography made by Mecos Films is, arguably, an instrument that promotes what Jeffrey Sherman regards as gay sexual integrity since, “for a gay man to achieve sexual integrity he must first become aware of his sexuality, acknowledge it, accept it, and act upon it” (1995: 675). Some queer theorists and feminists would deem sexual integrity, within pornography, as a fallacy because it promotes the commodification of the body and as such portrays an alienating and disempowering effect on the subject. However, as Carol Rambo, Sara Renee Presley and Don Mynatt assert in relation to the commodification of exotic dancers’ bodies, “the contest between researchers regarding the character of those selves and bodies, harnesses the language of commodification of the body through frames such as deviance/pathology, and exploitation/liberation” (2006: 215). It could be argued that such views are reductionist towards the human body itself and the individual who engages in practices that may commodify his body.

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Ultimately, this would strip the individual of the ownership of desire, as well as the ownership of the desire(s) that his body may awake in others (when the body is utilised as an instrument to achieve so). As a result, pornography permits Mexican gay men to become visible within a national project that seeks to validate homosexuality as a valid sexual orientation. In a country where machismo is considered the primal sexual template for men, one that is based on external appearance and behaviour rather than sexual desires or individual sexual identity, it is clear that pornography permits a realignment of the notions that such templates entail by dismantling machismo as an identity that is read on the surface of the body. The presence of masculine-acting porn stars who seem to equally enjoy the active and passive role during sex, permits to contest the image of the maricón as the stereotypical archetype of male effeminacy. Based on the images produced by Mecos Films, in contemporary Mexican queer culture, being anally penetrated does not imply a feminisation of the individual. It is clear that changes in the paradigms that construct queer sexuality in the country are visually explored and depicted within the narratives of the films made by this company. Michael Warner argues that “the practice of public sexual culture – including both cruising and pornography, among the realms of practice – involves not only a world-excluding privacy, but also a world-making publicness” (1999: 177). Arguably, Mecos’ pornography permits to see the [his]‌tory of queer male sexuality in Mexico from within, a type of version of history that Mexican men, and by extension other Latin American queer cultures, can relate to and see as part of their own reality. The popularity of Mecos’ films also demonstrates that there is a market, both national and international, for pornographic stories that do not adhere to the neo-colonialist romanticised narratives of colour foreignness that abound in Anglo-European pornography. As Gerardo Delgado clearly states, the future of Mecos Films, and that of the Mexican gay pornography is “creecer [as an internationally recognised porn house) y aportar al cine mundial nuevas historias, divertidas, cachondas, con crítica social,

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con chicos mexicanos y de latinoamérica, con mucho y muy buen sexo” [to grow and contribute to global cinema with new, entertaining and horny stories with social critique, with Mexican and Latin American guys and with loads of great sex] (Facebook. com, 2010).

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Notes Chapter 1: On Contemporary Latin American Homosexuality  1 This term was first coined by Evelyn Stevens (1973a) to explain gender relations and spheres of female power amongst Latin American women in the house and in society at large. She claims that this notion travelled to the New World with the conquistadores, eventually becoming part of mestizo identity in the continent. Marianismo has offered a hybrid complex of idealised femininity through a series of beliefs about women’s spiritual and moral superiority to men that have served to legitimise their subordinate domestic and social roles. It takes at its point of departure an intrinsic relationship between the quality of womanhood and the assumed nature of the Virgin Mary. Marianismo is the counterpoint to machismo; Asunción Lavrin views it as celebrating “the values of patience, stoicism, mediation, and nurturing that are presumed to be the qualities of Mary as preached by the Catholic Church and apply to all women as desirable forms of personal behaviour” (2005: 203).   2 Fuller asserts that most Latin males get married in their twenties or very early thirties (2003: 146).

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Chapter 2: Depicting Mariconería   1

  2

 3

  4

  5

  6

  7

Note that, unlike Manuel Puig’s original version of Kiss of the Spider Woman or Más que un hombre (both set during the years of the Argentinean Military Junta: 1976–1983), Babenco’s film is set in Brazil but without any specific references to the dictatorial period (1964– 1985). By the same token, Fresa y chocolate is set in communist Cuba and at the height of the Período especial in the 1980s. The very first explicit filmic images of maricónería in Latin American cinema can be seen in Arturo Ripstein’s El lugar sin límites (Mexico, 1978). This film will be discussed at length in Chapter 5 which looks at transgender identity in fiction cinema in Latin America. William Hurt’s interpretation of Molina won him the Best Actor Award both at Cannes in 1985 and at the Oscars in 1986, guaranteeing worldwide distribution of the film. The fact that Babenco has offered such a stereotypical representation of Latino male homosexuality is not surprising given he had already produced a similar image of homosexuality in Pixote (1980) Ernesto “Ché” Guevara’s image is one of the most recognisable figures within popular Latin American iconography and has been massively distributed both within the continent and exported worldwide. His face has become less emblematic of the revolution he fought in Cuba and Bolivia and the Marxist ideology he sought to institute in Latin America, and more a product of mass consumption, although not necessarily ideological, to the rest of the world (Dorfmann, 1999; Kunzle, 2008); Babenco cleverly borrows the latter image to demonstrate visually that Valentín is the ultimate guerrilla soldier. It is important to remember the cultural significance of the figure of the “hombre de pelo en pecho” [hairy chested man] who in the Hispanic cultural imaginary is regarded as the ultimate image of both virility and hetero-masculinity (Damjanova 1999). As a result, the image depicted in the film is incongruent with Latin American hetero-hegemonic cultural values. The English translation does not reflect the difference of gender speech that is easily recognised in Spanish through the addition of -a to the ending of words in order to render them in the feminine form.

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10 11

Formal form in Spanish for the personal pronoun “you”. The word “gay” has been taken out from the original to show how accurate this premise of gay typification can also be for straight typification. Mulvey’s citation in the original. See Nestor Almendro and Orlando Jiménez-Leal’s Mauvaise conduite [aka Conducta impropia] (France: 1984).

NOTES

  8  9

Chapter 3: Unwritten on the Body   1

  2   3

  4   5   6

  7

This section will give preference to the term masculine-acting rather than straight-acting homosexual even though the latter is more commonly used in gay (sub)culture. The reasons behind this choice are ideological, since the use of the word “straight” infers a desire to pass as heterosexual which is not necessarily the aim of homosexuals who do not exhibit effeminate behaviour. Capitals in the original. Martin Fierro is a two-part epic poem (1872 and 1879) written by José Hernández that evokes rural Argentina. It is regarded as a protest against the Europeanisation and modernisation of Argentina at the turn of the twentieth century. See Yvonne Tasker, 1993, for a more detailed theorisation of guns and masculinity in popular cinema. Colombian president (1990–1994). Homosexuality has been decriminalised in Argentina since 1887, and the first same-sex marriage in the country (and the whole of Latin America) occurred in 2009. See Chapter Five for a detailed explanation of this term.

Chapter 4: Where Gay Meets Race   1

Conversely, very diametrical images of racial others are offered in films such as Karin Aïnouz’s Madame Satã (2002) (analysed in Chapter Five) in which the black male protagonist is seen fucking his white lover (although at the very beginning of the film he claims to be a passive homosexual) in an attempt to offer audiences the “pleasure” of seeing the Negro acting in a dominant way.

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  2

Although Sergio’s ethnicity is a pivotal element of the film, it would be rather reductionist to associate his piercing with an allegiance to Mexico’s pre-colonial past. It is undeniable that there is some evidence of body primitivism amongst pre-colonial tribes in Mexico (Joyce, 1998) and yet such images have not played a key role in the country’s visual imagery.

Chapter 5: Depicting Cross-Dressing in Contemporary Latin American Fiction Cinema   1

 2

 3

  4

An earlier version of this chapter appeared in Latin American Research Review, Vol. 43, No. 8. Reprinted with kind permission of the publishers. For the purpose of this research, the notion of transvestism will be regarded as practically synonymous with transgenderism since, as will be demonstrated in the following chapter, most transvestites in Latin America long to live as a gender different from that of birth. The kind of differentiations that operate in both the American and European trans experiences are dissimilar to the way that transgenderism is experienced in Latin America. There is no evidence, in the literature available, to suggest that there are men who cross-dress without a desire to live life as females. Whereas Suthrell (2004) and Garber (1993), among others, suggest that many men who cross-dress and/or transvest may identify as heterosexual, bisexual, polisexual, etc., the Latin American experience would appear to indicate, on the basis of the primary and secondary material deployed in this project, that such identities remain absent from the formulation of transgenderism. See Pedro Lemebel’s La esquina es mi corazón: crónica urbana (1995), Severo Sarduy’s De donde son los cantantes (1967), Cobra (1972) and Maitreya (1978), Mayra Santos Feibre’s Sirena Selena vestida de pena (2008), Alonso Sánchez Baute’s Al diablo la maldita primavera (2003) among others, as prime examples of transvestism in Latin American literature. It is worth mentioning that, for the purpose of this chapter, transvestism will be viewed as a sexualised gender identity that is constructed and

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NOTES

perfected through practice and performance, since male femalers use their bodies as erotic objects through which to construct a desired self. Ontologically speaking, the notion of “practice” indicates an awareness of repeating an activity until it is perfected. As such, the Latin male femaler repeats his re-creation of femininity (body and behaviour) in order to create a believable socio-sexual subject. Only when the crossdresser undergoes a genital operation and modifies and changes his biological gender, does his femaling cease to be a practice and become part of his permanent gender identity.   5 It is necessary to point out that this research does not intend to deny or belittle the work of Latin American female directors and feminists who have offered different narratives and voices to contest hegemonic machismo.   6 Ripstein’s film does not seem preoccupied with articulating the notion of male femaling, that is a man who sees himself as a woman, but rather proposes that all gay men are somehow incomplete women. Therefore, the director fails to offer any justification for the character’s lack of engagement with transgender issues.  7 Another noteworthy point is that, after Cobo’s interpretation of La Manuela, most of his successive roles were of homosexual or sexually ambiguous characters (Miranda Fascinetto, 1999). Latin American culture seems to be unforgiving of any transgression of heteronormativity, even as part of a fictional text. It is perhaps because La Manuela was such an anti-heteronormative character, in a Mexican machista society which was only just beginning to show some tolerance towards the homosexual undertones of Jaime Humberto Hermosillo’s comedies, that Cobo was never able to shake off the stigma that this role caused.   8 According to Colón’s lyrics once Simón grows up, he goes abroad to study which is where he starts cross-dressing. When he returns to the family home, unannounced and dressed as the woman he now is, he is rejected by his father. He later becomes HIV positive and dies of AIDS alone in hospital.   9 However, Colón’s song should not to be regarded as a pro-gay or protransgender text. In fact, El gran varón simply served to reify the idea

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that homosexuality (and its “logical” transgender manifestation) was an orientation that could only be acquired in foreign lands away from the protective eyes of Latin heteronormativity; “al extranjero se fue Simón / pero de casa se le olvidó aquel sermón / cambió la forma de caminar / usaba falda, lápiz labial y un carterón” [Simon travelled abroad / and there he forgot everything he had been taught at home / he changed the way he walked / he wore a skirt, lipstick and a big handbag]. The song also worked to reinforce the popular belief that AIDS was a disease that only affected gay men since, in the end, Simón dies of “una extraña enfermedad” [a strange illness]. Throughout this section of the analysis, all references to the character of Susy will be enunciated in the feminine, as it would be rather reductionist to obliterate the character’s perceived gender identity by calling her in the masculine.

Chapter 6: No Machos Were Harmed in the Making of This Film   1

  2

  3

The popularity of such scenarios should not be associated with a lack of economic resources by the porn house since, as previously suggested, it responds to a trend established over the last few years by companies such as Randy Blue and SeanCody among others. Although it is not the scope of this chapter to discuss the relationship between the construction of the nation and its links to corruption, it is highly poignant to see the implications of Delgado’s remark in terms of the construction of a national identity (gay or otherwise). Italics in the original.

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Filmography Aïnouz, K (2002) Madame Satã. VideoFilmes, Dominant 7, Lumière and Wild Bunch. Brazil and France: 105 mins. Babenco, H (1985) Kiss of the spider woman. FilmDallas Pictures. Brazil and USA: 120 mins. Barreda, M (2002) Simón el gran varón. Vanguard Cinema. Mexico: 90 mins. Berliner, A (1997) Ma vie en rose. Canal +, CNC, Cofimage 8, Eurimages, European Co-production Fund, Freeway Films, Haut et Court, La Sept Cinéma, Pathe Center du Cinéma et Audivisuel France, Radio Télévision Belge Francophone and TF1 Films Productions. France, Belgium and UK: 88 mins. Bernaza, L & M Gilpin (1996) Mariposas en el andamio. Kangaroo Productions. Cuba and USA: 75 mins. Berneri, A (2005) Un año sin amor. BD Cine and Cinema Digital. Argentina: 102 mins. Braga, G and R Linhares (2007) Paraíso tropical (Telenovela). Rede Globo. Brieva, D and G Vallina (2007) Más que un hombre. Distribution Company. Argentina: 93 mins. Buñuel, L (1950) Los olvidados. Ultramar Films. Mexico: 85 mins. Cozarinsky, E (2005) Ronda nocturna. Cine Ojo. Argentina and France: 81 mins. Dawi, E (1985) Adiós Roberto. Americine. Argentina: 90 mins. Domínguez Díaz, F (2006) La otra cara de la luna (Telenovela). Televisión Cubana.

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Gómez, B (2004) Puños rosa. Dejarme Disfrutar Films. Mexico: 100 mins. Gosling, M & E Osborne (2000) Blossoms of fire. Fideicomiso para la Cultura, IMCINE, American Film Institute, Fundación Cultural Rodolfo Morales, National Endowment for the Arts, Film Arts Foundation, Rex Foundation, Swedish Television, Arhoolie Records and James Dougherty Foundation. USA and Mexico: 75 mins. Gutiérrez, A T & J C Tabío (1993) Fresa y chocolate. ICAIC, IMCINE, Sociedad General de Autores de España and Tabasco Films. Cuba, Mexico and Spain: 108 mins. Hermosillo, J H (1985) Doña Herlinda y su hijo. Clasa Films Mundiales. Mexico: 90 mins. ——— (2002) eXXXorcismos. Georgina Geron Tilmore, Goukine S.A. de C.V, Jaime Humberto Hermosillo Producciones (I) (II) and Resonancia S. A. Mexico: 78 mins. Hernández, J (2003) Mil nubes de paz cercan el cielo, amor, jamás acabaras de ser amor. Nubes Cines, Cooperativa Cinematográfica Morelos, Titan Producciones and Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografía (IMCINE). Mexico: 80 mins. ——— (2006) El cielo dividido. Centro universitario de Estudios Cinematográficos (CUEC), Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (FONCA), Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografía (IMCINE), Mil-Nubes Cine and Universidad Autónoma Nacional de México (UNAM). Mexico: 140 mins. Islas, A (2005) Muxes: Auténticas, intrépidas, buscadoras de peligro. IMCINE. Mexico: 105 mins. Justiniano, G (2007) Lokas. Banco Estado, Corfo, Sahara Films, Bastidas, Cinecorp, Integradora Cinematográfica and TitaProd. Chile: 90 mins. Lee, A (2005) Brokeback Mountain. Alberta Film Entertainment, Focus Features, Good Machine, Paramount Pictures and River Road Entertainment. Canada and USA: 134 mins. Lecchi, A (2000) Apariencias. Naya Films SA. Argentina: 94 mins. Lombardi, F J (1998) No se lo digas a nadie. LolaFilms. Spain and Peru: 120 mins. López, L, L M Uribe and B Romero Pereiro (1999) La vida en el espejo (Telenovela). TV Azteca.

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Novaro, M (1991) Danzón. Mexico: Fondo de Fomento a la Calidad Cinematográfica, Gobierno del Estado de Veracruz, IMCINE, Macondo Cine Video, Tabasco Films, TVE: 120 mins. Otheguy, S (2007) La León. Onyx Films, Morocha Films, Big World and Polar Films. Argentina: 85 mins. Padrón, H (2001) Video de familia. Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematografica (ICAIC), Distribución BAY VISTA and Producciones AcHePe. Cuba: 47 mins. Perez, G (2005) América (Telenovela). Rede Globo. Piñeyro, M (2000) Plata quemada. Oscar Kramer SA, Cuatro Cabezas, Mandarin Films SA, Punto B.S.R.L Planificación y Medios, Tornasol Films and Via Digital. Argentina, Spain and Uruguay: 125 mins. Ripstein, A (1978) El lugar sin límites. Conacite Dos. Mexico: 110 mins. Schnabel, J (2000) Before night falls. El Mar Pictures. USA: 133 mins. Schroeder, B (2000) La virgen de los sicarios. Canal+, Les Films du Losagne, Proyecto Tucan, Tornasol Films and Vertigo Films. Spain, France and Colombia: 101 mins. Uekrongtham, E (2005) Beautiful boxer. GMM Pictures Co. Thailand: 118 mins. Werneck, S (2001) Amores Possíveis. Cineluz. Brazil: 98 mins.

Discography Carrasco, A (1984) Si tu eres mi hombre y yo tu mujer (aka The Power of Love written by de Rouge, C; Mende, G; Rush, J; Applegate, M S). BMG Latin and BMG Music Colón, W (1989) El gran varón (written by Omar Alfanno). Fania. La India (1994) Ese Hombre (written by Manuel Alejandro and Ana Magdalena). SGAE, BMG Songs and Sony Discos. Lynch, V (1984) La Loca (written by Los Diegos). Warner Chappell.

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White, A (2006) The Oblivion of Love: Broken Sky 19(39). New York: New York Press. Available at http://www.nypress.com/print.cfm?content_ id=16602. Last accessed in June 2008. Whiteley, S (1997) Sexing the Groove: Popular Music and Gender. London and New York, NY: Routledge. Whittle, S (1995) “Gender Fucking of Fucking Gender? Current Cultural Contributions to Theories of Gender Blending” in R, Ekins and King, D (eds), Blending Genders: Social Aspects of Cross-Dressing and SexChanging. London and New York, NY: Routledge. Wiegmann, M (2002) “Re-visioning the Spider Woman Archetype in Kiss of the Spider Woman”. Journal of Analytical Psychology. 49(3): 397– 412. ——— (2003) The Staging and Transformation of Gender Archetypes in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, M Butterfly, and A Kiss of the Spider Woman. Ceredigion and New York, NY: Edwin Mellen Press. Wigozki, K (2003) El discurso travesti o el travestismo discursivo en La esquina es mi corazón: Crónica urbana de Pedro Lemebel. Available at http://www.class. uh.edu/MCL/faculty/zimmerman/lacasa/Estudios%20Culturales%20 Articles/Karina%20Wigozki.pdf. Last accessed March 2009. Wigozki, K (2004) “El discurso travesti o el travestismo discursivo en La esquina es mi corazón: Crónica urbana de Pedro Lemebel” in C Castillón, C Santibáñez and M Zimmerman (eds), Estudios Culturales y Cuestiones de la Globalización. Houston: LACASA. Wikan, U (1978) “The Omani Xanith: A Third Gender Role?”. MAN: New Series. 13(3): 473–476. Williams, B (1999) “I Lost It at the Movies: Parodic Spectatorship in Hector Babenco’s Kiss of the Spider Woman”. Cinémas. 10(1): 79–94. Willis, K (2004) “Latin American Urban Masculinities: Going beyond ‘the macho’” in B van Hoven and K Horschelmann (eds), Spaces of Masculinity. London and New York, NY: Routledge. Woods, G (1997) Articulate Flesh: Male Homoeroticism and Modern Poetry. London: Ramboro Books. Wuen, W Y (2005) “The Making of a Local Queen in an International Transsexual Beauty Contest”, paper presented as part of the Sexualities,

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Genders, and Rights in Asia: First International Conference of Asian Queer Studies. Bangkok, Thailand. Yarza, A (1999) Un canibal en MadridL La sensiblidad camp y el reciclaje de la historia en el cine de Pedro Almodovar. Madrid: Ediciones Libertarias. Yosef, R (2004) Beyond Flesh: Queer Masculinities and Nationalism in Israeli Cinema. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Young, A (1982) Gays under the Cuban Revolution. San Francisco: Grey Fox Press. Yudice, G (1981) “El Beso de la mujer arana y Pubis Angelical: Entre el placer y el saber” in R S Mine (ed.), Literature and Popular Culture in the Modern World. Upper Montclair: Montclair State College, 43–57. Zito Araújo, N (2000) A Negação do Brasil: O Negro na Telenovela Brasileira. Sao Paulo: Senac.

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Index Abject body 104, 106, 113 Abjection 71, 105–107, 111 AIDS xi, 195, 196 Alexis (character LVDLS) 82–87 Almaguer, T 14, 135 Alvaro (character LL) 73, 77–81 Ambiente 98–99 Anglo-European Gay pornography 175 Arregui, Valentín (character KOTSW) 24, 25, 30–33, 192 Babenco, H xix, 23–28, 84, 192 Barcelona Heat Gay Film Festival 172 Berlin International Film Festival xvii, xx Bicha 150–157 Bjorn, Kristen 168 Body technology 121 Braga, S 28–32 Brieva, D 23, 43, 48 Bruno (character MNDP) 111, 112

Butler, J xvi, 48, 49, 56, 59, 131, 157 Camp xii, xvi, 25, 28, 31, 35–40, 44, 46, 48, 51, 52, 82, 151, 171, 182 Camp altar 26 Carrillo, H 14, 55, 73, 88, 98 El cielo dividido (ECD) 99, 100, 102, 113–117, 121–127 Cinemachismo 174 Civilizacion y barbarie 74 Closet xi–xiii, xvi, xvii, 7, 17, 52, 58–67, 69, 71, 72, 79, 80, 82, 88, 90, 96, 115, 148 Clothed body 62, 123, 160 Corporeality xiii, 25, 30, 32 Corrupción Mexicana 172, 177, 179, 180, 186 Cross-dressing 38, 129–138, 145, 148–153, 158–161, 194, 195 David (character F&C) 35–43

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Defeminisation 32, 33 Delgado, G (aka El Diablo) ix, 171, 174–180, 189 Demasculinise 68 Diaz Mendiburo, L 62, 66, 96 Diego (character F&C) 34–43 Dona Herlinda (character DHYSH) 65, 66 Dona Herlinda y su hijo (DHYSH) 58–60, 62, 64, 66, 67 Drag (practice) 38, 161 Drag queen 148, 153, 155 Dyer, R 28, 36, 37, 38, 49, 58, 72, 97, 171, 185 Effeminacy xvi, 23–28, 35, 36, 40, 45, 57, 59, 76, 133–138, 142, 148, 156, 189 Effeminate mannerism 36, 40, 41, 44, 52, 53 Entendido xvii, 56, 59, 96, 110 eXXXorcismos 58, 59, 60, 66, 71, 86 Fatherhood 14, 16 Femaleness 25, 31, 51, 135, 136, 139, 148, 155, 156, 158, 160 Fernando (character LVDLS) 83–87 Fetishist envy 153 Fresa y chocolate (F&C) xii, xx, 23, 33, 37 García Canclini, N 4, 95 Gaucho 74–76 Gay apparel 125 Gay audience 40, 75, 80, 89, 113

Gay characters 35, 38, 39, 46, 47, 51, 53, 56, 59, 60, 80, 89, 101, 122, 127, 131, 137 Gay cinema 51, 52, 89 Gay gaze 39, 80, 81, 117 Gay identity 58, 80, 82, 83, 90, 96, 98, 113, 125 Gay macho 6, 72, 117 Gay pornography 6, 167, 168, 170, 175, 185–189 Gay protagonist xii, 25, 34, 38, 43–51, 67, 76, 85, 86 Gay subculture 60, 96, 99, 110, 119–127, 187, 188 Gender identity xviii, 104, 130–165, 194–196 Gender orientation 131, 142, 146 Gender performance 22, 76 Genderfuck 38 Gerardo (character ECD) 113–126 Gerardo (character MNDP) 100– 115 Gutierrez Alea, T xii, 23, 33, 34, 37, 40 Hermosillo, J H xvii, xx, 58–61, 65–72, 88, 96, 99 Hernandez, J ix, xvii–xx, 91, 96–127 Heteromasculinity xv, xvi, 48, 50, 84, 90 Heteronormativity 17, 37, 42–46, 49, 55–57, 60, 61, 64, 69, 70, 121, 130, 133, 135, 139, 141– 143, 152, 157

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Indo-mestizo xviii, 91–93, 97, 99–101, 103, 106–111, 115, 116, 119, 122, 169, 173, 175, 177, 178, 179, 180, 184–187 Infante, Pedro 177 Internacional 96, 120 João Francisco dos Santos (character MS) 134, 149–158, 168 Jonas (character ECD) 100, 113– 118, 121, 124, 126 Joto xvii, 9, 59, 62, 118, 175 Kiss of the Spider Woman (KOTSW) xix, 23, 24, 44, 53, 192 Kulick, D 12, 14, 130, 150, 157 Lancaster, R 2, 4, 14, 21, 43, 85, 135, 152 La León (LL) 58, 73, 77, 88

INDEX

Heteropatriarchy 4, 9, 39, 73, 76, 131 Heterosexualisation 39, 58 HIV/AIDS xi, 195 Hombría 10, 11, 16, 69, 76, 78, 82, 142 Homeboy aesthetics 177 Homoerotic 47, 60, 64, 65, 75, 76, 80, 84, 85, 90, 96, 125, 160 Homo-femininity 31, 32 Homophobia 9, 53, 71, 77, 104 Homosexualisation 36 Homosocial(ity) 42, 65, 66, 81, 112 Hypermasculinity 168, 182

El lugar sin limites (ELSL) 130, 132, 134, 137, 139, 140, 192 Machismo xiv, xv, 2, 6–15, 23, 40, 42, 50, 55, 57, 60, 62, 64, 68, 72, 75, 95, 122, 130, 142, 145, 146, 171, 174, 175, 182, 183, 188–191, 195 Macho (man) xv, 1, 6–16, 21, 22, 30, 33, 38, 39, 43, 47–50, 55–90, 95, 110–112, 116, 117, 122, 131, 135, 142, 147, 151, 157, 167, 182, 183, 188, 196 Macho attitude 47, 65, 79 Madame Satã (MS) 130, 132, 149, 152, 154, 157, 193 Malandro 155, 157 Male body xiii, 17, 18, 44, 69, 71, 90, 102, 113, 118, 155 Male femaling 131, 144, 148, 160, 195 Male hegemony 77 Malinche 118, 119 Manhood 12, 15, 16, 30, 50, 68, 84, 135, 137, 141, 148, 191 La Manuela (character ELSL) 134– 144, 195 Marco Antonio / Roberto (character eXXXorcismos) 61, 66–71 Marianismo 2, 15, 23, 89, 130, 135, 191 Maricón xv, xvii, 21, 22, 23, 27, 30, 34, 35, 36, 39, 40, 42, 46, 51, 52, 56, 59, 68, 70, 76, 82, 83

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Mariconería 21–24, 30, 36, 192 Mariquita 145 Mas que un hombre (MQUH) 23, 43, 45 Masculine-acting 14, 57, 87, 88, 189, 193 Masquerade 134 Mayate 66, 83, 107, 111–113, 139, 181, 182 Mecos Films xviii, 167–189 Melodrama 72, 117, 142, 145 Mestizaje 180, 185 Mexicanness 62, 94, 96, 102, 107, 172, 174, 181, 185 Mil nubes de paz cercan el cielo (MNDP) 99 Mil Nubes Producciones xix Mirror stage 159, 162 Mise-en-scène 23, 25, 34, 36, 52, 67, 69, 70, 112, 113, 124, 137 Misogyny 11 Moderno 96, 120 Molina, Luis (character KOTSW) 24–33, 192 Mora, S de la 55, 62, 95, 131, 137, 142, 143, 145, 174, 177, 182 Multiculturalism 94, 180 Murray, S xvii, 5, 12, 13, 14, 16, 22, 56, 57, 96, 110, 135

Otheguy, S xx, 58, 73–80, 88

Negro 94, 186, 193 Norberto (character MQUH) 48–49

Ramon (character DHYSH) 62–36 Ripstein, A 130, 135–138, 140, 144, 148, 165, 192, 195 Rodolfo (character DHYSH) 61–66

Olaf (Character MQUH) 45–47 Olga (character DHYSH) 63

Parker, R xvii, 14, 16, 87, 157, 158 Penis 12, 15, 68, 69, 70, 78, 79, 87, 112, 133, 140, 141, 142, 153, 168 Performativity xv, xvi, 57 Phallic empowerment 69, 80, 84 Phallic symbol 111 Phallocentric xi, xvi, 136, 150 Phallus 78, 85 Pluma xv, xvi, xvii, 70, 171 Porn stars 167, 169, 173, 176, 178, 180, 184, 186, 189 Pornography xviii, 6, 167–170, 175, 176, 178, 184–189 Prieur, A 13, 14, 16, 57, 130, 139, 155, 158 Proto-macho 48, 58, 65, 72, 73, 76, 81 La Putiza 172, 179, 181 Queer body xiii–xvii Queer culture 168–171 Queer male sexuality xiii–xvi, 18–19 Queer subculture xiv Quiroga, J 55

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Tabio, J C xii, 23, 33, 40 Teddy Award xvii–xx

Telmo (character MQUH) 44–49 Transgender(ism) xviii, 3, 19, 90, 122, 129–136, 144, 147, 150–158, 165, 192–196 Transvestism xviii, 6, 85, 129–133, 137–139, 144–152, 156–165, 194 Transvestite 6, 17, 129–135, 138–140, 143, 147–149, 153, 155–163, 165, 194 Transvestitic altar 133, 147 Transvestitic subjects 137, 156 Travesti 150–156, 160, 163, 175 El Turu (character LL) 76–81

INDEX

Same-sex desire xi, xii, xv, xvii, 1, 4, 5, 7, 9, 16, 17, 20, 26, 56, 61, 67, 80, 81, 89, 90, 127, 138, 160 El Santo 125, 172 Schroeder, B 58, 82, 84, 85, 87 Seleccion Mexicana 172–179 Sergio (character ECD) 100, 113, 117–126, 194 Sexual Other 35, 41, 77, 82, 118, 161 Sexxxcuestro 180, 184 Sicario 58, 82–88 Simon (character SEGV) 134, 144–147 Simón el gran varón (SEGV) 130, 132, 144–149, 195 Smith, P J 34, 36, 42 Social Imaginary (Latin America) xiii, 7, 11, 30, 49, 51, 55, 56, 58, 65, 66, 75, 76, 90–96, 99, 111, 116–120, 127, 172 Socio-sexual persona 53, 105, 107, 122, 176 Stevens, E 9, 55, 135, 191 Subero, G xvii, 96, 110, 126, 169, 172, 180, 184

Valentín see Arregui, Valentín (character KOTSW) 24, 25, 30, 32, 33, 192 Vallejo, F 82 Vallina, G 23, 43 La Verganza 172, 179, 181 La virgen de los sicarios (LVDLS) 58, 82, 87, 88 Wiegmann, M 24, 28–33 Wilmar (character LVDLS) 82, 87 Womanliness 129, 133, 136–138, 147, 152, 159 Yarza, A 26, 37, 147

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