Uh-oh, it looks like your Internet Explorer is out of date.
For a better shopping experience, please upgrade now.
Making Cinelandia: American Films and Mexican Film Culture before the Golden Age
In the 1920s, as American films came to dominate Mexico's cinemas, many of its cultural and political elites feared that this "Yanqui invasion" would turn Mexico into a cultural vassal of the United States. In Making Cinelandia, Laura Isabel Serna contends that Hollywood films were not simply tools of cultural imperialism. Instead, they offered Mexicans on both sides of the border an imaginative and crucial means of participating in global modernity, even as these films and their producers and distributors frequently displayed anti-Mexican bias. Before the Golden Age of Mexican cinema, Mexican audiences used their encounters with American films to construct a national film culture. Drawing on extensive archival research, Serna explores the popular experience of cinemagoing from the perspective of exhibitors, cinema workers, journalists, censors, and fans, showing how Mexican audiences actively engaged with American films to identify more deeply with Mexico.
1126365939
Making Cinelandia: American Films and Mexican Film Culture before the Golden Age
In the 1920s, as American films came to dominate Mexico's cinemas, many of its cultural and political elites feared that this "Yanqui invasion" would turn Mexico into a cultural vassal of the United States. In Making Cinelandia, Laura Isabel Serna contends that Hollywood films were not simply tools of cultural imperialism. Instead, they offered Mexicans on both sides of the border an imaginative and crucial means of participating in global modernity, even as these films and their producers and distributors frequently displayed anti-Mexican bias. Before the Golden Age of Mexican cinema, Mexican audiences used their encounters with American films to construct a national film culture. Drawing on extensive archival research, Serna explores the popular experience of cinemagoing from the perspective of exhibitors, cinema workers, journalists, censors, and fans, showing how Mexican audiences actively engaged with American films to identify more deeply with Mexico.
28.95
In Stock
51
Making Cinelandia: American Films and Mexican Film Culture before the Golden Age
In the 1920s, as American films came to dominate Mexico's cinemas, many of its cultural and political elites feared that this "Yanqui invasion" would turn Mexico into a cultural vassal of the United States. In Making Cinelandia, Laura Isabel Serna contends that Hollywood films were not simply tools of cultural imperialism. Instead, they offered Mexicans on both sides of the border an imaginative and crucial means of participating in global modernity, even as these films and their producers and distributors frequently displayed anti-Mexican bias. Before the Golden Age of Mexican cinema, Mexican audiences used their encounters with American films to construct a national film culture. Drawing on extensive archival research, Serna explores the popular experience of cinemagoing from the perspective of exhibitors, cinema workers, journalists, censors, and fans, showing how Mexican audiences actively engaged with American films to identify more deeply with Mexico.
Laura Isabel Serna is Assistant Professor of Critical Studies in the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California.
Table of Contents
A Note on Translations and Film Titles xi
Prólogo (Prologue) xiii
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction 1
Part I. The Yanqui Invasion 17
1. U.S. Motion Picture Companies Go South of the Border 19
2. American Movies, Mexican Modernity: The Cinema as a National Space 47
3. In Lola's House: Fan Discourse in the Making of Mexican Film Culture 85
Part II. Border Crossings 121
4. La Virgen and La Pelona: Film Culture, Border Crossing, and the Modern Mexican Woman 123
5. Denigrating Pictures: Censorship and the Politics of U.S. Film in Greater Mexico 154
6. Al Cine: Mexican Migrants Go to the Movies 180
Conclusion 215
Abbreviations 223
Notes 225
Bibliography 279
Filmography 303
Index 309
What People are Saying About This
Shot in America: Television, the State, and the Rise of Chicano Cinema - Chon A. Noriega
"Laura Isabel Serna presents an original and compelling analysis of Mexican film history and the international reception of Hollywood films, making a substantial contribution to our understanding of both. Making Cinelandia shifts attention within the historiography of Mexican cinema from production to reception, from national boundaries to the idea of 'Greater Mexico,' and from national cinema to foreign films. It also provides an exemplary case study of how nation-building occurred in dialogue with U.S. culture."
Movie-Struck Girls: Women and Motion Picture Culture after the Nickelodeon - Shelley Stamp
"MakingCinelandia is one of the best new books I have read in a very long time—a groundbreaking study of Mexican film culture that will transform our understanding of exhibition practices, censorship, fan cultures, and filmgoing habits during a period traditionally excluded from histories of Mexican cinema. Laura Isabel Serna adds considerably to knowledge of silent-era Hollywood's global reach, transnational stardom, and struggles over the representation of race and ethnicity on movie screens."
