{"id":2392,"date":"2019-07-08T10:22:31","date_gmt":"2019-07-08T10:22:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/?p=2392"},"modified":"2019-07-08T11:33:33","modified_gmt":"2019-07-08T11:33:33","slug":"countering-moral-orthodoxies-in-the-cabaretera-music-and-dance-in-salon-mexico-and-aventurera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/2019\/07\/08\/countering-moral-orthodoxies-in-the-cabaretera-music-and-dance-in-salon-mexico-and-aventurera\/","title":{"rendered":"Countering Moral Orthodoxies in the Cabaretera: Music and Dance in Sal\u00f3n M\u00e9xico and Aventurera"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Today <\/em>Medi\u00e1tico<em> is delighted to present a videographic essay &#8220;Cabaretera Subtexts&#8221; by this website&#8217;s co-editors <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbk.ac.uk\/culture\/staff\/teaching-staff\/catherine-grant\">Catherine Grant<\/a> (Birkbeck College, University of London) and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sussex.ac.uk\/profiles\/157871\/research\">Dolores Tierney<\/a><\/em><em>\u00a0(University of Sussex), offering a counter reading of a genre unique to Mexican cinema, the <\/em>cabaretera<em> (cabaret\/brothel film). The accompanying text also highlights the season &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/whatson.bfi.org.uk\/Online\/default.asp?BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::permalink=salonmexico&amp;BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::context_id\">Salon Mexico: The Golden Age of Mexican Cinema<\/a>&#8221; playing at the BFI Southbank throughout July.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Cabaretera Subtexts\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/344002980?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963\" width=\"470\" height=\"264\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Countering Moral Orthodoxies in the <em>cabaretera<\/em>: Music and Dance in <em>Sal\u00f3n M\u00e9xico <\/em>and <em>Aventurera<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0by Dolores Tierney<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Currently showing all throughout July at the <a href=\"https:\/\/whatson.bfi.org.uk\/Online\/default.asp?BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::permalink=salonmexico&amp;BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::context_id\">BFI Southbank<\/a> is a season of films from the Golden Age of Mexica Cinema. Featuring films made between 1934 and 1960, the season extends the span of this vibrant period in Mexican filmmaking slightly beyond its generally agreed upon parameters (1935-1955), but with good reason. It means the season can incorporate some gems from the pre-industrial era <a href=\"https:\/\/whatson.bfi.org.uk\/Online\/default.asp?doWork::WScontent::loadArticle=Load&amp;BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::article_id=86771025-C014-4874-8DC5-F1890B8B8BCC&amp;BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::context_id=00AAB176-3BBC-4D20-8A11-5DE23110B5D8\"><em>The Woman of the Port<\/em><\/a> (Arcady Boytler 1934) and <a href=\"https:\/\/whatson.bfi.org.uk\/Online\/default.asp?doWork::WScontent::loadArticle=Load&amp;BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::article_id=996349AB-5D58-4B21-822B-24607EA8791A&amp;BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::context_id=5804D221-9175-4987-9E7A-2506D18669F8\"><em>Two Monks<\/em><\/a> (Juan Bustillo Oro, 1934) and Mexico\u2019s first Academy Award contender <a href=\"https:\/\/whatson.bfi.org.uk\/Online\/default.asp?BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::permalink=macario&amp;BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::context_id=\"><em>Macario<\/em><\/a> (Roberto Gavald\u00f3n 1960) in addition to other films from this period of immense expansion and popularity in the Mexican film industry. Called the \u2018Golden Age\u2019 the term refers not just to the relative dominance this cinema enjoyed in Spanish speaking markets across Latin America, the United States and Spain but also to its gilded and idealized representations of Mexican nationalism<strong>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Featuring major stars (Dolores Del Rio, Maria Felix, Arturo de C\u00f3rdova Pedro Armend\u00e1riz and Nin\u00f3n Sevilla), directors (Emilio Fern\u00e1ndez, Roberto Gavald\u00f3n, and Julio Bracho), and some of the distinctive genres &#8211;the <em>cabaretera<\/em> (cabaret\/brothel film) and noir films&#8211; from the classical era, this season also challenges some standard assumptions about the Golden Age of Mexican cinema. <a href=\"https:\/\/whatson.bfi.org.uk\/Online\/default.asp?doWork::WScontent::loadArticle=Load&amp;BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::article_id=427E946B-9E8B-433A-A019-9113AEE0FB07&amp;BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::context_id=ECB4A815-E112-4399-993E-62C1B6501A54\"><em>La otra<\/em><\/a> (<em>The Other One <\/em>Roberto Gavald\u00f3n) features Del Rio, the Grand Dame of Mexican cinema, known for playing noble and sometimes simple characters, embodying identical twins, one evil and the other good<strong>.<\/strong> The season, programmed by\u00a0<span style=\"float: none; background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; cursor: text; font-family: -apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px;\">Features Editor at <\/span><em>Sight &amp; Sound<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/james___bell\">James Bell<\/a>, also counters the idea of Mexican cinema as a predominantly rural cinema, featuring films mostly set in Mexico\u2019s visibly modern and modernizing urban centres (Mexico City, Guadalajara, Ju\u00e1rez). This emphasis on the very excellent urban films produced during this period presents a different canon of Mexican classical cinema in line with the current celebrations taking place globally, including retrospectives of Mexican <em>noir<\/em> at\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.moma.org\/calendar\/film\/1533\">MoMA<\/a> in New York and the Cinematheque in Melbourne.<\/p>\n<p>In the spirit of challenging some assumptions made about Golden Age Mexican cinema the above video essay offers a counter-reading of a genre unique to Mexican cinema, the <em>cabaretera<\/em> (cabaret\/brothel film). Like all films from the Golden Age,\u00a0<em>cabareteras<\/em> are the product of the very specific political and ideological context of post-Revolutionary Mexico and also of the industrial context of a transnationalized Mexican cinema which adopted and adapted Hollywood codes and genres. In the early 1940s, under the administration of President Avila Camacho, the Mexican State supported culture and the arts as a major part of its programme of conservative cultural nationalism &#8211;including the burgeoning film industry&#8211; with the precise aim of promoting a positive and unified image of Mexico in the wake of its armed revolution. This positive and unified image of Mexico included a set of moral codes and norms defining proper roles for men and women.<\/p>\n<p>The video essay explores moments in\u00a0<em>Sal\u00f3n M\u00e9xico<\/em> (Emilio Fern\u00e1ndez 1949) and <em>Aventurera <\/em>(Tito Gout 1950), typical <em>cabareteras <\/em>in that they feature women as the breadwinners forced by growing economic hardship into sex work. Conventional readings suggest that these films deal with the economic crisis in patriarchy and in the ideals of the Revolution by forwarding an ideology of family orthodoxy and national unity, recuperating the other \u2013 the sex worker \u2013 within a narrative of conventional morality (Hershfield, 1996: 77). Taking a cue from Ana L\u00f3pez\u2019s seminal essay \u201cTears and Desire: Women and Melodrama in the \u2018Old\u2019 Mexican Cinema\u201d (1993), this video essay reads musical and dance sequences in these films as offering a subtextual critique to the patriarchal narratives and dominant ideologies most commonly read into classical Mexican cinema: \u2013loving close ups of a dance sequence in which the camera celebrates the forbidden spectacle of dance as sublimated sex, and music as a space of female subjectivity and protofeminist self-awareness.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>References<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Hershfield, Joanne (1996).\u00a0<em>Mexican Cinema, Mexican Woman 1940\u20131950<\/em>\u00a0Austin: University of Texas Press.<\/p>\n<p>L\u00f3pez, Ana (1993) \u201cTears and Desire: Women and Melodrama in the \u2018Old\u2019 Mexican Cinema\u201d in Manuel Alvarado, John King and Ana L\u00f3pez (eds).\u00a0<em>Mediating Two Worlds: Cinematic Encounters in the Americas <\/em>London: BFI, 147-164.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today Medi\u00e1tico is delighted to present a videographic essay &#8220;Cabaretera Subtexts&#8221; by this website&#8217;s co-editors Catherine Grant (Birkbeck College, University&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":2394,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[301,300,232,302],"class_list":["post-2392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film","tag-aventurera","tag-cabaretera","tag-classical-mexican-cinema","tag-salon-mexico"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/files\/2019\/07\/Salon-Mexico.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p49QSj-CA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2392"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2840,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2392\/revisions\/2840"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}