MONT 111G
Hollywood Meets Latin America 2: Anglo Images in Latin American Film |
Practice Final Exam
PART 1: IDENTIFICATIONS (closed book)
Identify as many of the following categories as possible for each of the quotes below. In your identifications, please be as specific as possible for the best overall score. At a minimum, you should be able to identify at least six categories for each quote, including its significance in the context of the film as a whole. (10 points per quote; 60 points in total for this section)
Examples of the types of quotes that will appear on the final exam:
a. "When I speak in English, I feel like an actor.... When I speak in Spanish also"
b. "Yo tomo a los hombres cuando los necesito y los tiro a guiñapos cuando estorban"/"I take men when I need them and discard them like useless rags when they get in my way"
Note: A total of 8 quotes will appear on the final exam from the 10 films listed below and you will need to identify at least 6 of the 8 quotes.
Films (click on the links below for additional information on the individual films)
PART 2: SHORT ESSAYS (this part of the exam is open book; you are permitted to bring laptops)
Out of three potential essay topics (listed below), two will appear on the final exam. Make sure that you comment on at least three different films in the two short essays. It is expected that you will bring a detailed outline for each topic to the exam, including specific examples from the films to be analyzed to support your argument and any quotes from secondary sources that you intend on using (60 points each, for a total of 120 points):
A. Gringos in Latin American cinema. Using one or more of the quotes cited below or another similar quote from the secondary readings as a point of departure, develop a thesis regarding the interactions between English and Spanish in at least two of the films studied in class this semester. Some issues that might serve as a useful point of departure include: 1. portrayal of characters of British versus United States origin; 2. how language use influences audience perception; 3. use of "gringo" or related terms; 4. the U.S. and Latin America's "other" and vice versa.
"In Latin America, at least, a United States passport, and a bit of confidence open doors to an elite world of perks and preferential treatment." (Chesa Boudin 2009, 15)
"As a gringo, I could more easily transcend the rigid divisions that separated the multiple worlds nestled in and around Bolivia's capital city.... It seemed easier for me to cross class boundaries in Latin America than for Latin Americans to do so in their own countries or for me to do in mine." (Chesa Boudin 2009, 210)
"[L]anguage was either a great wall separating me from peoples and places or a skeleton key opening every door" (Chesa Boudin, 2009, 4)
"Golden Age films...., usually using the gringo in juxtaposition, stressed the integrity of family, showed how capitalism unleashes greed, exalted machismo and patriarchy, and associated class with nation: 'the lower the station, the more genuine the Mexicanness." (Stephen D. Morris 2005, 192)
"[T]he 'good gringo' [not only] does not intervene with moral judgements or try to exploit Mexico... [but also] acknowledges the value of Mexican culture" (Stephen D. Morris 2005, ...)
"In the words of [John] Mraz, 'the gringo in Mexican cinema is, basically, a form of the non-Mexican... its function is to serve as the antipode of the Mexican in the definition of the Mexican." (Stephen D. Morris 2005, 201)
"[A]s imagined through Mexican cinema, the U.S. functions as a device to help define national culture.... U.S. characters embody and represent not only the values considered inappropriate for the Mexicans, but also traits that metaphorically represent the interests and values that threaten those of the nation" (Stephen D. Morris, 2005)
"Mexicans encounter los Estados Unidos on a daily basis, at virtually every turn, without having to leave the country." (Stephen D. Morris 2005, 1)
"Mexican perceptions of the U.S. are multidimensional, contested, and fluid, and ... no single authentic view exists." (Stephen D. Morris 2005, 7)
B. Correspondence to or deviation from classical Hollywood paradigms. Using one or more of the quotes cited below or another similar quote from the secondary sources as a point of departure, develop a thesis about the relationship between Hollywood and Latin American cinema, based on evidence from at least two of the films studied in class this semester.
"[W]hile the film industry does not straightforwardly determine the aesthetic and ideoloical characteristics of film, it none the less sets the constraints within which aesthetics, ideology and reception operate." (Douglas Gomery 1998, 245)
"Hollywood's is an insidious cinema, which hegemonically bends compliant filmmakers to its built-in conservative agenda. It is a dangeroud and a mightily powerful apparatus, but one that can, I believe, be discreetly re-programmed to undermine that conservatism." (Charles Ramírez Berg 1993, 97)
"Hollywood's attraction to audiences has remained remarkably stable throughout its history. It has remained an essentially erotic, star-centered, generic cinema; it has kept a close association with wider consumerist trends, especially fashion; and it has maintained its global prestige with high production values, typically expressed through action and spectacle." (Ruth Vasey 2008, 289)
"The manifestos of the 1960s and 1970s valorized an alternative, independent, anti-imperialist cinema more concerned with provocation and militancy than with auterist expression or consumer satisfaction. The manifestos contrasted the new cinema not only with Hollywood but also with their own countries' commercial traditions, now viewed as 'bourgeois,' 'alienated,' 'colonized.'" (Robert Stam, 2000)
"The classical Hollywood filmmaking model, both as industrial mode of production (complete with studio and star systems, powerful producers, and well-developed distribution networks and exhibition chains) and as signifying practice, was faithfully imitated in Mexico. But it was imitated in the Mexican style" (Charles Ramírez Berg, 1992)
"In redefining cinema's social function and creating a new mode of production and a new relation to the audience, the key element has been the relationship [many Latin American filmmakers] established with the Indians, who are both participants in the making of the films and the intended audience of the completed works" (Roy Armes, 1987)
"The anti-illusionist stance of counter-cinema is supported by an argument that the realism of classic narrative cinema is a mystification, that it deceives the spectator by obscuring the real relations of production of cinematic representations" (Pam Cook, 1986)
"Classical Hollywood narratives exhibit four important traits.... Those traits include clarity (viewers should not be confused about space, time, or events), unity (cause and effect connections are direct and complete), goal-oriented characters (they are active and invite identification), and closure (loose ends are tied up, often through romantic union).... This style relies on 'unobtrusive craftsmanship (Thompson, p. 9), ensuring that viewers will become absorbed in the narrative" (Maria Pramaggiore and Tom Wallis, 2008)
"In the classic narrative, events in the story are organized around a basic structure of enigma and resolution. At the beginning of the story, an event may take place which disrupts a pre-existing equilibrium (see Barthes, 1977). The classic narrative may thus be regarded as a process whereby problems are solved so that order may be restored to the world of the fiction.... [T]hrough taking on [the protagonist's] implied point of view, the spectator identifies with the fictional world and its inhabitants, and so is drawn into the narration itself" (Pam Cook, 1986)
C. Transnationalism, Globalization, and Latin American Cinema. To what degree is the concept of nationality relevant during periods of massive migration of peoples and of globalization of world economies? Does it make more sense to speak of "world cinema" as opposed to say "Mexican" or "Bolivian"cinema, in the case of certain films from Latin America? Using one or more of the quotes cited below or another similar quote from the secondary sources as a point of departure, develop an answer that draws on evidence from at least two of the films analyzed in class this semester.
"It is impossible to understand Latin Americfa simply by spending time with immigrant communities in the United States, just as it is impossible to understand those immigrant communities without spending time in their countries of origin" (Chesa Boudin 2009, 221)
"I came to see Latin America as a prism through which I could better understand my own roots in the radical left in the United States, and the role my country plays in global society" (Chesa Boudin 2009, 218)
"90% of the audiovisuals offered to children, adolescents and youngsters [in Latin America and the Caribbean] come from the United States" (Reina María Hernández, 2008)
"The Mexican melodrama was the first indigenous cinema (to Latin America) to dent the Hollywood industry's pervasive presence in Latin America; the first to consistently circulate Latin American images, voices, songs and history; the first to capture and sustain the interest of multinational audiences throughout the continent for several decades" (Ana M. López, 1993)
"A national cinema in an underdeveloped country, like a literature under colonialism, can only be understood if the external shaping forces, and the ways in which individuals and social classes have responded to them, are also appreciated" (Roy Armes, 1987)
"Developments in non-Western cinema since the notion of a Third World identity was born in the mid-1950s have all... been linked with developments in the West and form part of an unwritten history of world cinema in which Western and non-Western modes of expression are entwined" (Roy Armes, 1987)
"Hamid Naficy has proposed a genre of 'independent transnational cinemas'…. [that] challenge us to understand films in terms of 'intertextual, cross cultural, and transnational struggles over meanings and identities.'" (Allen Meek 2003, 14)
"What remains of national identities in a time of globalization and interculturalism, of multinational coproduction and the Chain of the Americas, of free trade agreements and regional integration? What remains when information, artists, and capital constantly cross borders?" (Néstor García Canclini 1997, 247)
"The weakening of the nation-state should open up the possibility for diverse voices and images--both local and transnational--to create many public scenarios in order to discuss the ways in which we wish to change and the directions for achieving that [change]" (Néstor García Canclini 1997, 252)
See research bibliography for a partial list of secondary sources to review in preparation for part 2 of final exam