Transnational Cinemas

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Hybridity and genre in transnational Latin

American cinemas
Luisela Alvaray
To cite this article: Luisela Alvaray (2013) Hybridity and genre in transnational Latin American
cinemas, Transnational Cinemas, 4:1, 67-87
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/trac.4.1.67_1

Published online: 03 Jan 2014.

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Date: 05 April 2016, At: 18:42

TRAC 4 (1) pp. 6787 Intellect Limited 2013

Transnational Cinemas
Volume 4 Number 1
2013 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/trac.4.1.67_1

Luisela Alvaray
DePaul University

Hybridity and genre in

transnational Latin American
cinemas
Abstract

Keywords

By examining some of the functions of what we may call transnational genre films
in the Latin American context, this work attempts both to contribute to and extend
the study of media counter-flows. To this end, I refer to the notion of hybridity in
the transnational cinema environment to then examine the structuring of genre films
in two specific national contexts: Argentina and Mexico. I argue for Latin American
genre films as unstable contact zones of a wide variety of national, regional and transnational determinants, and in which hybridity may serve as a strategy to inscribe
local agency in transactions of differential economic and cultural power.

Latin American cinema

genre
hybridity
transnationalism
co-productions
horror films
romantic comedy

The three terms included in the title of this article hybridity, genre and the
transnational form a starting point to attempt to understand specific ways
in which the cinema of Latin America emerges and circulates in the twentyfirst century. Nataa Durovicov has stated that the transnational is an open
term that implies unevenness and flexibility without necessarily suppressing
the idea of the nation and without encompassing the totality that the term
global implies (2010: ixx). In the pursuit of a more accurate sense of the
transnational elements in Latin American cinema, I will refer to a strategy that
moves precisely in this middle ground film co-productions.

67

Luisela Alvaray

1. The MPA is the

international
counterpart of the
Motion Picture
Association of America
(MPAA).

Since the mid-1990s, new co-production agreements between European

and US film industries and Latin American producers have been populating
the Latin American cinema-scape. The powerful companies of the Motion
Picture Association (MPA) as well as European investors, for instance, have
had an increasing role in directly funding and distributing many international
crossover films.1 In the same time period, from an institutional standpoint,
regional organization Ibermedia (sponsored by Ibero-American governments)
supported multiple productions and channels for distribution throughout the
region. More recently, private film companies and new indigenous investors
from Latin America itself have multiplied. Media markets and new forms of
digital distribution have proliferated, thereby, rebalancing the grounds of film
production and distribution.
The synergic alliances between local actors and actors in the developed
world or contact zones to use Kathleen Newmans term (2010: 9) bring
out questions regarding the unevenness of their exchange. When thinking of
questions of power and resistance, or verticality and horizontality, the examples surpass such polarities. As Newman states,
Areas once considered peripheral (that is, less developed countries, the
so-called Third World) are now seen as integral to the historical development of cinema. The assumption that the export of European and US
cinema to the rest of the world, from the silent period onward, inspired
only derivative image cultures has been replaced by a dynamic model of
cinematic exchange.
(2010: 4)
From the perspective of the new millennium, the idea of transnational cinemas may serve to explore the in-between effects that a film may exert on or
cultural spaces that a film may open in a certain socio-historical context.
While the national in cinema studies has been set against Hollywoods
globalism, nowadays the national cannot be conceived, at least in the Latin
American cinematic realm, but within the logic of transnational and transregional alliances and hybrid products.
With transnationality, hybridity has been conceptualized as the cultural
logic of the present. Nstor Garca Canclini referred to the Latin American
historical processes as hybrid as those that unevenly and, many times,
contradictorily combine traditions and modernity in unpredicted ways. This
perspective sustains that transnational economic exchanges and the circulation
of mass media products have created a new cultural sphere far from the essentialist or purist notions of national culture adopted by many nation states in
the second half of the twentieth century. The term hybrid for Garca Canclini
became a very useful category to counter notions of art and culture that were
previously conceived as unrelated to the rest of society, or that constrained
the national to untouched local cultures. Hybridity manifested in the coexistence of several temporalities and the combination of diverse cultural spheres
in one social environment at one moment in time. In fact, he asserts, affirmation of the regional or national should be conceived now as the capacity
[of people and societies in Latin America] to interact with the multiple international symbolic offers on the basis of their own positions (Garca Canclini
1995: 266). Grounded on such local positioning, the inclusive combination of
local and foreign could potentially develop a more equalitarian or democratic
culture in the region.

68

Hybridity and genre in transnational Latin American cinemas

Marwan Kraidy sees hybridity as a challenging notion for all its multifarious connotations and their inherent contradictions. Yet, in his critical view, he
maintains that it is a notion that may help us to move beyond binary conceptualizations of power and resistance. The construction of hybrid texts may be
a politically charged strategy to affirm multiple alternative views and decentre canonical subjectivities. He sustains that what can be called hybrid media
texts result from industry practices such as coproduction, format adaptation, and localization (Kraidy 2005: xi).
From Garca Canclinis historical processes to Kraidys strategic construction of hybrid media texts, the idea of hybridity serves to map out cultural
transformations at the material and discursive levels in Latin America. With
that in mind, I come to the third key term in the title of this article, that of
genre. If there is a node where transnational practices of co-production and
hybrid structures quintessentially converge, it is in the genre films that have
been produced in Latin America during the last decade. Since the 1990s the
new interdependent flows of transnational media have brought about a new
attention to genre. Film-makers in Latin America are considering elements
of genres or a combination thereof as shortcuts to tell autochthonous
stories. And producers are using cross over genres to appeal to wider audiences. Garca Canclini already talked of what he called impure genres to
point to one of the seminal processes for understanding hybridization (1995:
249). With that expression he meant genres where different codes and
languages intersect. Because of their formulaic, easy-to-reproduce structure and their massive popularity, genre films have usually been conceived
as representative of dominant industrial trends, and they have, therefore,
been interpreted primarily as evocative of conformist or mainstream ideologies. But transnational industrial practices, transcultural film languages and
an array of dominant and subaltern ideologies are now understood to be
some of the multiple determinants converging on a single film. Many films
around the world are evidence of the transgressive power that a genre film
may convey. However, more work needs to be done to register and interpret the functions of genre in regional film industries. As media critic Daya
Kishan Thussu has stated,
Theoretical debates have largely been confined to how the rest of the
world relates to, adopts, adapts or appropriates Western media genres.
There is relatively little work being done on how the subaltern flows
create new transnational configurations and how they connect with
gradually localizing global dominant flows.
(2010: 229)
Although the strict dichotomy of dominant versus subaltern flows is certainly
questionable, by examining some of the functions of what we may call transnational genre films in the Latin American context, this work attempts both to
contribute to and extend the study of media counter-flows. To this end, I will
first refer to the notion of hybridity in the transnational cinema environment
to then examine, through particular case studies, the structuring of genre films
in two specific national contexts: Argentina and Mexico. I will argue for Latin
American genre films as unstable contact zones of a wide variety of national,
regional and transnational determinants, and in which hybridity may serve as
a strategy to inscribe local agency in transactions of differential economic and
cultural power.

69

Luisela Alvaray

2. In 2009, India produced

1288 feature films, and
Hollywood produced
677 (see Central Board
of Film Certification,
Ministry of Information
and Broadcasting,
Government of India
2009; MPAA 2010).
For an analysis of
world production and
distribution trends, see
T. Miller et al. (2005) and
Thussu (2010: 233).
3. More about state
policies regarding
the production,
distribution and
exhibition of cinema
in Latin American
countries in N. De Izcue
et al. (2009).
4. For analysis of
Ibermedia, see T.
Falicov (2007), J. M.
Moreno Domnguez
(2008) and L. Villazana
(2009).

70

Homogenization versus diversification of cinema

The unstoppable process of interaction and exchange that happens on a transnational scale continues to be controversial when it comes to the products of
the audio-visual mass media. More than just commodities, images and sounds
are carriers of a value-ridden system prone to easy assimilation and imitation
around the world. But images and sounds are also, as culturalists have demonstrated, differently perceived and interpreted. Cultural context, diverse forms and
levels of education and power relations are variables that affect the wayspeople
consume or appropriate cultural artefacts. Thus, whereas there continues to be
a critical current that underscores the homogenizing process of industries such
as Hollywood, there is also another discursive tendency that emphasizes the
intrinsic richness of processes of hybridization and cultural exchange.
Hollywood continues to fulfil the image of empire that those content with
the paradigm of cultural imperialism use in order to stress its dominance
of the market in terms of production and distribution. There is clearly an
economic asymmetry in comparison with most other local and regional industries. The films coming out of such a commercial enterprise would be tainting all film-making around the world with their easy formulas and financially
successful genre films, or so the thesis goes. This way of thinking implies that
Hollywood films are the standard against which all other films are gauged.
There is no doubt that the major Hollywood studios continue to run the gears
of the film industry in most of the globe. And even if the United States is
only the second most prolific country in terms of film production right after
India, clearly Hollywood has the largest share of screens at a global scale.2
Without diminishing the importance of these facts, however, and because we
are talking about content industries, the analysis of regional cinemas vis--vis
Hollywood cannot merely rely on scale and numbers. Economic advantage
does not necessarily or automatically give Hollywood cultural and political gain. To contend that the films produced by the image factories of the
MPA companies are standardizing global output is a conjecture many times
repeated which in no way advances our knowledge of present regional industries (Getino 2003; Snchez Ruiz 2004; Martinez et al. 2007). Following that
thought, categorizing films as commercial or culturally relevant seems too
reductive to grasp the complexity of narratives presently being created. An
analysis of regional film industries would benefit, rather, from examining the
practices of production and circulation as much as the films themselves as
sites of unstable balance where different cultural dynamics are manifested.
While co-production is indubitably one of the crucial intergovernmental
policies to promote film-making in Latin America, it has also been a strategy utilized by private companies from the United States, Europe and Latin
America itself to take advantage of the creative momentum and widespread
popularity of the regional industry.3 Regardless of the motivations behind an
international institution such as Ibermedia, or behind private companies such
as Spanish Wanda Visin, or Disneys Buena Vista that is, be it a state policy
or a business strategy co-production has served to advance the imaginary of
an integrated Ibero-American culture.4 This is not to say that the differences of
intent are not important. Quite contrarily, they are and very much shape the
content of the films that come out. I want to emphasize, however, that through
de facto alliances among borderless film-makers and producers, there continues to be a search for topics within geographical boundaries and/or referring
to cultural specificities of Latin Americans. Examples of these processes are the

Hybridity and genre in transnational Latin American cinemas

works of authors, such as Alfonso Cuarn, Guillermo del Toro and Fernando
Meirelles; the iteration of transnational topics, such as those of the films Terra
Estrangeira/Foreign Land (Salles, 1995), Babel (Gonzlez Irritu, 2006) and
Stellet Licht/Silent Light (Reygadas, 2007), just to name a few; and transcendent narratives, such as those of the films Whisky (Rebella and Stoll, 2004) La
mujer sin cabeza/The Headless Woman (Martel, 2008) and nibus 174/Bus 174
(Padilha, 2002). These examples are illustrative of the significant connections
that may be strengthening the imaginary of a unifying regional culture or as
Walter Mignolo has named it, the idea of Latin America (2005).
It would be unrealistic, however, to think of such unification as a homogenizing force. If we consider the production alliances and the kinds of audiovisual products being made, there seems instead to be a dynamic multiplicity,
an ongoing reconfiguration of hybridizing forces taking place. Kraidy has theorized hybridity as a space where intercultural and international communication practices are continuously negotiated in interactions of differential power
(2010: 435). In Kraidys view, the term serves more to understand strategically
the uneven forces of a transnational and transcultural global reality, than to
purely and mechanically describe it. Looking at communicative practices in
this way is circumventing binaries as a way to categorize the world, and rather
opening up multiple interstices where culture is continuously negotiated.
Hybridity, Kraidy ultimately contends, is the cultural logic of globalization
(2010: 435). Therefore, beyond cultural imperialism and cultural pluralism,
hybridity needs to be situated structurally, discursively and textually for there
is the potential to understand and reclaim hybridity as an empowering notion
where agency is being re-inscribed and refashioned.
Fredric Jameson describes particular cases of hybridity in films where there
is a transfer of familiar plots to unfamiliar environments a Western set
in the Balkans in Dust (Manevski, 2001), and a tormented Hong Kong love
story set in Argentina in Happy Together (Kar-Wai, 1997) (2010: 31719). Such
transfers are not attempting, nor do they necessarily achieve, a synthesis of
cultures. Happy Together, in particular, excludes a Western perspective. It is a
story that decentres the United States by showing a way in which globalization
is happening beyond the developed north. This specific hybrid text, Jameson
finds, forces us to invent new maps of the current world system (2010: 319).
Such examples of transnational transference of familiar tropes refer us back to
Newmans beyond-Hollywood dynamic model of cinematic exchange, and to
Thussus expressed necessity to study new transnational configurations out of
alternative media flows, for which the concept of hybridity seems valuable.
Hybridization seems to be happening at different levels and serving distinct
purposes in the new formations of the image-making industries in Latin
America. First of all, at an industrial level, it seems paramount to consider
the fluctuating economic and cultural forces wherever they may be coming
from that are contributing to mould regional cinemas. This will serve to situate film-making practices within a broader discursive context. With the case
studies from Argentina and Mexico that follow, it will be clear that the production of genre films is not confined to state or privately produced films. The fact
is that both the art cinema sphere along with more commercial enterprises
have engaged with what we may arguably call a multiplication of cinematic
genres in Latin America thus, the functions of genre films shift depending
on the national and transnational contexts. And second, at a representational
level, which complements the first view, it seems also necessary to understand new hybrid forms of representation and the politics that sustain them.

71

Luisela Alvaray

5. Km 31 became the
highest grossing local
film in 2007 and the
third highest ever for
a Mexican film, after
El crimen del Padre
Amaro/The Crime of
Father Amaro (Carrera
2002) and Una pelcula
de huevos/A Film about
Eggs (Riva Palacio and
Riva Palacio, 2006).

Myanalysis will consider the discursive, the textual and the empirical levels of
the practices regarding the production of genre films in Latin America.

Argentina genre strikes back

There is a new movement of Latin American horror films that is
coming out of Argentina, Chile, Peru, Puerto Rico and other places,
says producer Hernan Moyano of Paura Flics. The movement is gaining
attention abroad.
(Newbery 2008).
Although genre films have never left the Latin American mediascape, it seems
accurate to say that since the mid-2000s there has been a resurgence of and
new experimentation with genres. This is evident when browsing some of the
headlines from reports in trade magazines, where one finds the following:
Genre pics take focus at Argentinas Pampa films (Newbery 2010); Latam
draws on local talent (about animation) (De la Fuente 2009); Brazil goes
country (about music genre) (Cajueiro 2009); Other genres getting fresh look
(Hecht 2008a); Genre titles hit Argentina (Hecht 2008b); Argentina filmmakers grab horror by the budget (Newbery 2008); Mexico embraces its own
movies: Commercial titles juice local wickets (OBoyle 2007). With numerous
variants, horror, thrillers, science fiction, comedy and animation films have
become a staple throughout the region.
Even though Mexican Km 31 (Castaeda, 2007) has been one of the most
profitable horror film in Latin America and Guillermo del Toro is at the front
of the revival of the genre, Argentina is where the horror genre has developed
more steadily and uniquely since the early 2000s.5 The uniqueness of such a
development has to do with how the genre flows as an alternative current to
mainstream industrial films. In other words, its marginality is representative of
the struggle of its makers and promoters to create and maintain a tradition of
horror films in the region. A brief historical account is appropriate at this point.
After a few years of making low-budget, self-financed films and due to the
lack of distribution venues for independent horror films, some film-makers
producers decided to organize a film festival in Buenos Aires strictly dedicated to screen horror, fantastic and bizarre films. Thus, in 2000, the Buenos
Aires Rojo Sangre (BARS) film festival was created. As of November 2010,
in its eleventh edition, the festival had screened more than 1800 short and
long features (BARS). With international and Ibero-American sections, the
organizers of the festival tried to present a broad overview of the genre as
it continued to develop. Progressively, there have been more submissions,
more spectators attending and, lately, institutions, such as the Argentine Film
Institute (INCAA), the Film Museum (Museo del Cine) and the Buenos Aires
legislature, have either sponsored or declared the festival of cultural interest.
However, in spite of the institutional support, and probably because it is still
frail, the participants continue to define the festival as separate from the rest
of the traditional (institutional and commercial) structures of the audio-visual
world in Argentina. Curator Pablo Sapere asserts, This is ultra-independent
it is a cinema financed by its makers (Garca 2008, my translation). This
emphasizes the idea that making and circulating horror films continues to be a
personal endeavour even more distant from mainstream channels of production and distribution than the films exhibited at the more internationally known

72

Hybridity and genre in transnational Latin American cinemas

Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema (BAFICI).6 More

fascinating for all its implications is film-maker Javier Diments assertion that,
Auteurist cinema is established as the dominant aesthetics; therefore, coming
back to genres is an act of rebellion (Garca 2008, my translation).7 Whereas in
the history of cinema it is generally assumed that genre films are industrial products and auteurist films represent the unique vision of an author, or a discourse
that is avoiding the narrative and mimetic formulas of genre films, Diments
assertion deconstructs such binaries altogether. In Argentina, rebellion has
nowadays been relocated and horror films are one of its manifestations. These
kinds of films are presently equated with the most individual form of cinematic
expression and far away from commercial circuits or governmental oversight.
This has certainly to do with the fact that horror is a genre without a long tradition in Argentina and, surely, distant from habitual expectations regarding what
a national cinema ought to be. Ultimately, however, the existence of this group
of young film-makers associated with horror films is certainly a call to reposition genre. More generally, there is a definite return to the formulas offered by
genre film-making in Latin America. Nonetheless, as is clear with the case of
horror films in Argentina, referring to genre cannot be automatically equated
with commercial products and, indeed, may acquire completely different functions within the structures of a national and transnational cinema.
This is, nonetheless, an unstable and fluid relocation of genre.
Contradictorily, the appreciation for the financial and ideological independence of horror film-makers from the established structures of Argentine
cinema is often articulated along with an overstated appreciation for international recognition, or a desire to tap into transnational commercial circuits.
Sapere states, This year we are going to present Breaking Nikki, a film shot
here [in Argentina] but in English and directed by Argentinean Hernn
Findling (Garca 2008). Like Nikki (Findling, 2009), other films have also been
shot in English, and film-makers have received financial support from companies in the United States and elsewhere as an attempt to cross over to international circuits. 8 Additionally, private media companies, as much as the official
National Film Institute, have expressed interest in participating in the production of horror films, all of which certainly shifts the claims of autonomy linked
to the present identity of the film-makers that exhibit their films at BARS.
Other representative cases to exemplify the turn to genre in the Argentine
film scene have to do with how established film-makers, who in the 1990s
were part of an innovative new wave that revolutionized Argentine cinema,
and have more recently been dedicated to making films within specific
genres. Adrin Caetano, co-director of the groundbreaking Pizza, birra, faso/
Pizza, Beer, and Cigarettes (1998), a hyper-realistic reflection of youth culture
in Buenos Aires, later directed the thriller Crnica de una fuga/Chronicle of an
Escape (2006).9 Pablo Trapero, who directed Mundo gra/Crane World (1999)
a sombre yet compassionate look at the life of the unemployed in crisisswamped Argentina more recently released Carancho (2010). The latter is
a crime thriller that he describes as a classic film noir, like those of the 1940s
and 1950s, where the police plot quietly became a portrait of a complicated
social fabric (Frater 2009). Trapero is thus directly acknowledging his borrowing from a typical Hollywood genre. Worth mentioning is the case of other
film-makers coming from a television background, such as Damin Szifrn,
who has worked on several comedies and crime thriller Tiempo de Valientes/On
Probation (2005). These examples illustrate the different spheres between art
and commercial circuits in which genre films are developing.

6. BAFICI has been

running since 1999.
7. El cine de autor qued
como una esttica
dominante, as que
volver a los gneros
representa un acto de
rebelda.
8. For example, Daniel de
la Vegas Chronicle of
the Raven (2003) and
Death Knows Your
Name (2004); and Sergio
Esquenazis Winter
Visitor (2008) and They
Want my Eyes (2009).
9. Caetano latest film
is crime thriller Evil
Woman.

73

Luisela Alvaray

10. Caetanos Crnica

de una fuga earned
$537,406, and was only
second to the animated
feature Paturozito: La
gran aventura (Massa,
2006).
11. A similar praiseful
tone can be read in the
critiques published
in prestigious
newspapers, such as
Clarn and La Nacin
(see Fras 2006) and
Lpez 2006).
12. In Mexico, France
and Italy the profits
were the highest with
Mexico leading with
$83,002 and France
with $44,084 (Box Office
Mojo).

74

By looking more closely at Caetanos Crnica de una fuga/Chronicle of an

Escape, I will attempt to understand the use of genre in a more established
side of the Argentine industry how elements of genre are used to re-inscribe
agency into cinematic discourses, while assessing the impact of new
co-production practices in the film-making equation. In other words, through
this case study, I will examine the manifestation of a hybrid symbolic order,
as described by Garca Canclini, as local and transnational forces combine to
make genre films in Argentina in the present.
Caetanos Crnica de una fuga is set in the years of the Dirty War (19761983).
Thus, for local audiences, history resonates in this film. It revives kidnapping
and torture for many who still have the vivid memory of these practices. And it
makes vicarious witness of those that only knew about the torture of a cruel and
ruthless dictatorship through reference. The story is based on a novel relating
the true escape of four detainees from a mansion utilized by military forces to
imprison and torture anyone thought to be opposing the totalitarian government in place (Tamburrini 2002). The film, accordingly, attempts to realistically
recreate the limitless horror experienced by the four survivors, to then focus
exclusively on the almost surreal and suspenseful escape. Caetano, describing
the topic of the film, says, We conceived the movie as a story of those who
survived horror, told like a horror movie, while taking care never to tip over into
the realm of morbidity a narrative already rooted in horror (Levy 2008). While
using elements of the horror genre, the topic of this film is not based on the
supernatural but, rather, it is human-made horror. And the direct referent is a
historical event yet still fervent in the Argentine collective memory.
Crnica was a critical and box office success in Argentina. Out of 64
Argentine features released in 2006, it was the second most profitable national
film.10 It won three Silver Condors of the Argentinean Film Critics Association,
the most prestigious accolades in the country. Acknowledging the elements
that Caetano borrowed from different genres, such as suspense and horror,
Argentine critics tended to praise both the excellent use of narrative and stylistic codes, as much as the testimonial value of the film. In Leer Cine, Santiago
Garca asserts, for instance, that, Chronicle of an Escape is not trying to be the
ultimate film about the dictatorship, but it is the first to use almost in its entirety
the language of cinematic genre without neglecting political content (2006, my
translation). Horacio Bernades, for his part, affirms that, Chronicle of an Escape
narrates an escape that really happened, as much as the nightmare [of the main
character], which was not merely an individual nightmare, but one that reached
a whole country, a society, and an epoch (2006, my translation).11 In this way,
he is stressing the importance of the film as historical and cultural memory.
The domestic success of Crnica was not mirrored at all in the international
arena. Whereas in Argentina it grossed more than half a million dollars, profits in Chile and the United States put together grossed less than 4000dollars
(Box Office Mojo).12 Crnicas generic form worked in very different ways
abroad. In the United States, for instance, it was picked up for distribution
by The Weinstein Company, Costantini Films and IFC Distributors. It was
marketed principally as a suspenseful thriller and a horror movie and treated
as such by the critics. This is patent when reading the blurbs selected for the
promotion of the DVD: Deeply unsettling makes your stomach knot, and
Riveting a white-knuckle pace (Caetano 2008). These sentences decontextualize the historical anchor and leave the film standing on its pure cinematic
manoeuvres. In a way, the film was devoid of content in the hands of the
marketers in the United States. And it flopped with audiences. However, Iam

Hybridity and genre in transnational Latin American cinemas

not implying that the marketers caused the lack of success. Most certainly
there was already an undeniable lack of awareness for US audiences vis--vis
the historical referent, which in all probability had to do with the little interest that the film generated. And acknowledging the void, publicity campaigns
highlighted the film as a suspenseful thriller. In all justice, Caetano himself
did not feel the need to overtly contextualize the topic of the film:
I must stress, what attracted me most strongly to the idea of this film
was this story of survivors having escaped from hell. There was no need,
at least as far as I was concerned, to paint a portrait of a dictatorship, but
simply to use the framework in which the escape found its meaning and
its force to be able to affect the viewer.
(Caetano in Levy 2008)

13. Outside of Brazil,

Carandiru earned
$382,982 (Box Office
Mojo).
14. Twentieth Century
Fox Argentina also
produced Tiempo de
valientes/On Probation
(Szifron, 2005), El
camino de San Diego/
The Road to San Diego
(Sorn, 2006) and El
pasado/The Past
(Babenco, 2007).

Not providing enough information of the context is a tactic that worked in

Argentina, where most people know the history surrounding the escape
depicted in the film. But such decontextualization does not necessarily work
elsewhere. Thus, an informed audience was key for the domestic success of this
film. Cases where the context of reception greatly influences the acceptance
of a film are not unusual. We may recall, for instance, the case of Carandiru
(Babenco, 2003), also a dark, realistic film about the largest and one of the
most violent prisons in Latin America. It became the highest grossing film
in Brazil during the year of its release, with 4.6 million admissions (Cajueiro
2004); however, its success was not mirrored abroad.13
Genre served in the Argentine case to explore more deeply the subjectivities of people who experienced torture during the Dirty War; it offered audiences the possibility of keeping the memory of a horrendous historical period
alive, following the official stance. In 2006, the same year that Crnica was
released and during Nstor Kirchners presidency, the Argentine Congress
annulled the amnesty laws that had protected for decades military personnel
guilty of kidnapping, torturing and disappearing people during the Dirty War.
A Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice was marked as a public holiday
and the trials to prosecute those responsible for war crimes began a practice
that has continued to the present. Context for the film was very much alive
in the public discourse, and the film itself was contributing to articulate it by
offering a shocking view of the controversial past. Conventional elements of
horror and suspense thrillers were used in this case to give substance to the
horrors already lived by a generation of Argentines and which are still present
in the Argentine collective memory. Beyond its transnational contact zones
and its potential for economic success, the Argentine horror genre became a
conduit to critically comment on local historical affairs.
Since the 1990s, Argentina became the first producer of films in Latin
America. Therefore, local productions became an attractive investment
for foreign companies. Crnica was the second of four films that Twentieth
Century Fox Argentina produced in the country between 2005 and 2007.14
Since then, the company stopped producing and only continued distributing,
as it had done for decades. The reasons for halting production could be many,
but it is a fact that whereas some of Foxs films had a relatively good return in
Argentina, all of them failed to yield substantial international returns. Fox originally subsidized projects by well-known and box-office successful directors
who, at first, worked within conventional genres or tried formulas. Yet, genre
in most cases functioned to convey the individual and/or socially committed

75

Luisela Alvaray

15. For perspectives on the

horror film in Mexico,
see D. Greene (2007)
and A. Syder and D.
Tierney (2005). For a
brief history of the
genre in Mexico, see
R. Avia (2004). Lemon
had already gained the
attention of audiences
and critics when it first
produced dark comedy
Matando Cabos/Killing
Cabos (Lozano, 2004),
and continued its
strike of economically
successful genre films
with thrillers such
as Sultanes del Sur/
Sultans of the South
(Lozano, 2007) and
light comedy Navidad
S.A./Xmas, Inc. (Rovsar,
2008). See Young (2008),
C. Newbery (2008b) and
M. OBoyle (2007).
16. In the Playground was
written by Alcalde and
David Muoz, based
on the novel El juego
de los nios by Juan
Jos Plans. The film was
being produced in 2008
by Spains Filmax and
Mexicos Lemon and
Canana. However, after
2008, references to the
film dissapeared.
17. Spanish Nostromo
Pictures is lined up to
produce Them.
18. Viaje Redondo,
travelled the
international festival
circuit since March
2009, and garnered
several international
awards. Ro de oro
premiered in Mexico
in November 2011,
and internationally
in the Marrakesh
Film Festival, during
December 2011. De dia
y de noche premiered
in Mexico in October
2011, three years after
the end of production.
19. All figures except those
of 2006 were found
at Box Office Mojo.
The 2006 figures were
extracted from OBoyle
(2006a, 2006b, 2007).

76

views of the film-makers, thus becoming an empowering approach. It is still

another way in which film-makers in Latin America considered elements of
genres or a combination of them as shortcuts to tell localized stories. In
doing so, they reclaimed hybridity in film-making as a way to inscribe agency
into a transnational industrial product.

Mexico genre takes over

Less than a decade ago, it would have been hard to imagine a Mexican
production company lining up a western and sci-fi project in the same
year. Yet, as the industry has evolved, the spectrum has opened up
considerably.
(Hecht 2008a)
Genre films have been part of the menu of many recently formed independent
production companies in Mexico, a trend probably led by Lemon Films. Since
2004, Billy and Fernando Rovsar, Lemons head producers, have designed some
of the most successful hits. Horror feature Km 31 had a surprising success, considering that the genre, save the works of Guillermo del Toro, had not been at the
forefront of the industry for almost two decades (Hecht 2008a).15 However, other
independents are also producing genre films. Production company Canana, with
a reputation for supporting high-quality auteurist films, was lined up as one of
the producers of the English-titled, however never completed, horror film In the
Playground (David Alcalde).16 Now Alcalde has in the works yet another horror
feature titled Them.17 Like in the Argentine case, it is apparent that the production of genre films is not constrained to commercial producers. Conversely,
it is coming out of varied sides of the industry and with different production
values. In fact, the epigraph with which this section begins refers specifically to
Mantarraya, under its new label Cadereyta Films. Mantarraya Producciones, run
by film-maker Carlos Reygadas and producer Jaime Romandia, had typically
funded Reygadas stylized and very personal cult features Japn/Japan (2002),
Batalla en el cielo/Battle in Heaven (2005) and Stellet licht/Silent Light (2007).
However, ten years after its creation, Mantarraya/Cadereyta began supporting
films made according to certain generic formulas. The most recently produced
are the western Ro de oro/River of Gold (Aldrete, 2010), the road movie Viaje
redondo/Round Trip (Tort, 2009) and the science fiction drama De da y de noche/
By Day and By Night (Molina, 2010).18 These examples show that the tendency
of producing genre films is not solely constrained to the mainstream commercial sphere and their study can, in fact, give us insights into the different workings of hybrid or impure genres. Hybridization is here a product of transferring
familiar tropes (those of genre) into untried setting a structure that generates a unique kind of hybrid objects, as described by Jameson (2010: 317). The
transnational aspect of these films is located in their mode of exhibition, which
basically has occurred through festival circuits. The Mantarraya/Cadereyta films
constitute a supplementary point of comparison with productions determined
by transnational co-production deals.
Along with Mexican independent companies, some of the Hollywood
majors opened local production offices in Mexico by the mid-2000s namely,
Columbia (2003), Warner Bros. (2005) and Disneys Miravista (2005). And
soon thereafter, they dedicated their efforts to producing genre films, as can
be seen in the table below.19

Lemon Films
(Indep.)
Columbia (Sony)

Selected titles of most profitable Mexican genre films 2000s.

El orfanato

8.5

Animation comedy

11.5

Romantic comedy

2007

10.9

Mystery thriller

Horror

2007

6.8

20062007 Romantic comedy

13

Animation comedy
4.3

5.5

Sequel to Una pelcula de huevos.

Highest-grossing local film in 2007. Third

highest-grossing Mexican film ever
Columbias first film produced in Mexico.
Second highest-grossing domestic film of
the year
Co-production Spain-Mexico. Produced by
Guillermo del Toro

Second highest-grossing Mexican film ever,

after El crimen del padre Amaro
WB first film produced in Mexico. Second
most profitable domestic film of the year
Miravistas first film produced in Mexico

First film produced by Lemon Films

Domestic box office Notes

($ million)

Dark comedy

Genre

comedy

2006

Warner Bros
2008
(Spain) Telecinco
(Spain)
Otra pelcula de huevos Videocine (Televisa) 2009
y un pollo

Nias Mal

Km 31

Efectos
Warner Bros
secundarios
(Mexico)
Cansada de besar sapos Miravista (Disney)

Una pelcula de huevos

Lemon Films
2004
(Indep.)
Videocine (Televisa) 2006

Matando Cabos

Year
released

Production
company

Title

Hybridity and genre in transnational Latin American cinemas

77

Luisela Alvaray

20. For more details about

this alliance, see L.
Alvaray (2011: 7374).
21. Utilizing the same
premise, screenwriter
Beatriz Novaro had
previously investigated
female relationships
through a road movie
in El jardn del edn/
The Garden of Eden
(Novaro, 1994). In the
latter case, there
were subplots that
provided another view
on illegal immigration,
transnational
smuggling and
globalization. But in
Viaje redondo, the
womens journey is
more of a coming-ofage story that explores
sexual taboos and
emphasizes womens
solidarity with each
other, creating a clear
intertextual connection
to Alfonso Cuarns
famed feature Y tu
mam tambin.

78

The most obvious transnational connection of these films is at the production level, where local companies partnered with US corporations to produce
and internationally distribute films. It seems right to conclude that with the
expansion of production companies in the 2000s came a renovated interest
in making genre films from all sides of the industry. Since its foundation,
Canana partnered with Focus Features, for instance.20 Lemon Films began its
incursion into film production signing a deal with Warner Bros for distribution of its first hit Matando Cabos/Killing Cabos (Lozano, 2004). Later on, it
co-produced the horror hit Km 31 with Spanish company Filmax, and signed
with Warner Bros. to co-produce and distribute Sultanes del Sur/Sultans of
the South (Lozano, 2007) (OBoyle 2006a, 2006b). Another example is that of
Cha cha cha, which made a deal with Universal Pictures to co-produce five
features (Arroyo 2007).
In addition, some of these films had an afterlife that continued in foreign
markets and in different media. Nias Mal/Charm School (Sariana, 2007),
for instance, was made into MTV Latin Americas first telenovela, which was
recorded in Colombia with one Colombian and two Mexican protagonists.
The telenovela, in turn, used music from Mexican, Argentine and Colombian
pop and rock groups. It was broadcast in Latin America, as much as in the
United States (Arellano 2010). Immediately after the broadcast of the first
episodes in the United States, fans created an Internet forum to comment on
the episodes, where English-only speaking viewers showed their passionate
interest for the programme (Nias Mal/Pia &Valentina).
But there is also a transcultural transaction when creating the narratives of
these features. Cansada de besar sapos/Tired of Kissing Frogs (Coln, 2006) and
Nias Mal were profitable romantic comedies, which, according to an industry report, were carefully constructed attempts at making Hollywood-style
commercial hits tailored for Mexico (OBoyle 2007). It would be convenient
just to dismiss any further reflection by settling with the fact that producers are
simply trying to earn profits through formulaic films. This is certainly true. But
high profits also confirm that audiences do attend films that will fulfil certain
expectations for them. Therefore, it seems important to move in another direction by attempting to understand further the structural and discursive logic of
genre films that are impure, to go back to Garca Canclinis term, or that in
their own constitution negotiate narrative elements from different traditions
and cultural contexts. In other words, I will try to determine to what extent the
hybrid condition of these films may be re-inscribing some form of local agency
in their very narrative. With this goal in mind, I will make Cadereytas Viaje
redondo/Round Trip and Sonys Nias Mal/Charm School serve as the centre
of the following enquiry because of the similarities in their general subject
matter and their disparities in terms of mode of production.
Viaje redondo is a road movie about two young women from different backgrounds who meet on the road while in search of their love. Luca
and Fernanda are heading to solve their inconclusive relationship with their
respective boyfriends. While their overstated class differences separate them
at the beginning of the journey, their vulnerability and mutual support open
them up to the exploration of friendship and sexual intimacy. Set near the
border with the United States, the story combines localized codes with situations of transcultural awareness.21
Nias Mal also explores female relationships, as rebel teen Adela, who
wants to be an actress, is sent by her conservative father to a charm school
in order to learn proper manners and etiquette. From the start, there is a play

Hybridity and genre in transnational Latin American cinemas

with difference. At the school, Adela meets four other young women: an
upper-class snob, a non-conformist nerd, a lesbian musician and a ditsy and
nave apprentice. Nonetheless, the ease with which one can use such labels
to describe the characters is evidence of their one-dimensionality. Like in a
typical Hollywood teen-flick, the film uses stereotypes for easy humour and
narrative simplification.
Easily dismissible as a safe and predictable studio comedy, Nias is
fraught with ambivalences if examined beyond the surface. Since it became
the second most profitable Mexican film of 2007 and its success sparked Sony
Corporations interest in making a derivative telenovela to be internationally
broadcast, it is worth exploring those ambivalences further.
Adela is initially headstrong, the most rebellious of all females, the shrew
that needs to be tamed. Such a trope is culturally ingrained in the west, most
directly through Shakespeares The Taming of the Shrew, and permanently
iterated in popular culture texts. Although the original play arguably seems
misogynistic and patriarchal, it continues to fascinate worldwide and in Latin
America for it openly and directly questions or confirms certain views of
gender relations for contemporary readers/spectators.22 Nias Mal brings back
the question of whether women still need to be subdued to fulfil the image of
perfect domesticity. Whereas the text seems headed to confirm such necessity
most of all when Adela is hosting the perfect dinner party for her father
ultimately, Adelas hatred of appearances takes over and her unruliness rules.
What seemed extreme at the beginning of the film ends up being understood
as part of a world where diversity is the norm.
The simplicity of the characters makes exceedingly clear the gendered and
sexualized conflicts of the story.23 Lesbian Valentina, for instance, who was
discriminated against in the beginning, is non-problematically accepted by
all in the end. Reproduction of and resistance to patriarchy as much as an
acceptance of new forms of sexuality are inscribed in one stroke. Thus, the
film easily accommodates both normative and non-normative forms of social
identity, privileging an inclusive society over all. It is precisely the deconstruction of gender roles one of the important aspects that caught the attention of
foreign audiences.
Viaje redondo, contrarily, explores intimacy and sexuality by devoting time
to develop the characters, exposing their inner contradictions and following
their transformation. It is ultimately sustaining that sexualities are a nongendered-specific continuum, and sexual preference may fluidly change over
time. In a last turn of the story, Luca and Fernanda become intimately and
sexually involved with each other, only to end up with boyfriends that they
hardly know. In the end, the narrative returns to heteronormative happiness,
if achieved only through non-normative encounters.
Both films are deconstructing gender roles, yet in very different ways. Both
are made within certain genres, but our expectations may change once we
learn more about them. Nias was produced by Sony, promoted as a romantic
comedy within a Mexican locale, and became a profitable film. It was directed
by Fernando Sariana, a well-known Mexican producer and director. Viaje
Redondo, on the other hand, was produced by Reygadas and directed by
Gerardo Tort, best known internationally for his documentary-like fiction De
la calle/Streeters (Tort, 2001). Two years of exhibition in national and international festivals had to pass for Gerardo Tort to be able to release Viaje Redondo
in the Mexican commercial theatre circuit (Imcine 2011). Certainly the transnational connections in the case of Nias gave it a clear advantage when it

22. In the Mexican

cinematic context,
famed Emilio
Fernandezs film
Enamorada/In Love
(1946) was a loose
adaptation of the story
set during the Mexican
Revolution. In contrast,
the rebellious figure
of Beatriz Peafiel
played by Mara Flix in
Fernando de Fuentes
Doa Brbara (1943) is
ultimately pushed back
for not conforming
to the dominant
patriarchal system.
23. As Richard Dyer has
suggested, stereotypes
may sometimes
function to advance a
particular progressive
perspective of a
specific text (2006).
From this perspective,
it can be said that by
having a diverse group
of (stereo)types, there
are many ways in
which suture can occur.

79

Luisela Alvaray

24. On December
2009, Mexico Citys
jurisdiction legalized
same-sex marriage. The
law became effective
in March 2010. The law
is strongly opposed by
the Catholic Church
and the Partido de
Accin Nacional (PAN).
A poll made by major
Mexican newspaper El
Universal in November
2009 showed that
50% of the people
supported the law, 38%
were against it and 12%
did not answer (Anon.
2009).

came to its distribution. Probably its clear adherence to a tried formula was
the bet its producers waged to get wider exposure. Viaje redondos use of the
road movie genre was certainly more peculiar and less tried. Both films have
totally different production backgrounds and trajectories of circulation, and
both are dealing with and contesting normative subjectivities, albeit qualitatively different at the textual level. Neither film can be easily categorized.
The case of Nias exemplifies the layered ways in which culture and power
interact. Sony Corporation is a transnational conglomerate and controls
multiple media outlets, including Columbia Pictures Mexico, which directly
produced Nias. Film director Sariana is active in the Mexican official and
commercial film circuits and experienced in international co-productions. With
all its stereotyping and narrative simplifications, the film is ultimately conveying an inclusive and diverse vision of society one in which different sexualities and forms of gender relations may coexist. In the Mexican public arena
these kinds of discourse may advance in unpredictable ways a social agenda
for equality. I am referring to the fact that the Mexican congress only recently
legalized same-sex marriage; however, actual acceptance is still far from being
universal (Anon. 2009).24 In this context, the naturalization of same-sex desire
in both films seems already a commitment to the new law in almost undetectable ways. These are certainly cases that show that there is not a clear
causal link between economic structures of power and the cultural status quo.
Contrarily, the mixed backgrounds of people and companies involved in the
production of Nias generated a hybrid discourse where genre became a rapid
tool to combine local and transnational narrative elements into an accessible
and highly attended film with local ideological resonances resonances also
found in Viaje Redondo, in spite of its less than ideal revenues (OTK 2012).
As Kraidy contends, social practice, acting translocally and intercontextually,
is the site of agency, where both agency and structure should be assessed
dialogically to understand the contingencies of the circulation of power in
culture (2005: 149). In this sense, my analysis of these two Mexican films has
considered the forms in which the transnationality of the contexts led to a
hybrid use of genres, which, in turn, did not necessarily reproduce the prevailing social order. Instead, both films attempted to challenge it within different
production systems and catering to different audiences.

Transnational flows
The recent rise of genre film-making has taken place parallel to the increase of
co-productions and distribution circuits in Latin America, which has intensified in the 2000s. Film genre production has typically been related and continues to be linked to large industries. The Central Board of Film Certification
in India, for instance, classified each one of the 1288 national feature
films made in 2009 into one of 25 genre categories (Central Board of Film
Certification, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India
2009). Hollywood continues to use iteration of film formulas as a strategy to
sell films all over the world. And China has, since the 1990s, engaged in the
production of high concept action films to appeal to global audiences. Film
genres have historically been the Esperanto of film language. They serve as
shorthand to catalogue films and, consequently, are easily understood categories for film distribution across borders and cultures. Nonetheless, as analysed
above, the use of genre alone does not guarantee international distribution
and exhibition. The connection of genre with the commercialization of cinema

80

Hybridity and genre in transnational Latin American cinemas

is widely known. It has served large industries to build up and develop as

such. Likewise, it is now playing some part in the dissemination of middlesize regional industries.
The proliferation of markets, as much as other distribution networks not
studied in detail here, provide evidence that Latin America has become a
creative hub of audio-visual production and trade. Content is originating from
this regional node and it is circulating intra- and extra-regionally in a continuous flow. The new surge of genre films has developed hand in hand with the
expansion of production and circulation networks, constituting a noteworthy
counter-flow to larger, dominant systems. But it would be too reductive to
say that the Latin American industry is merely modelling itself after larger
capitalistic audio-visual enterprises, and thus becoming ideologically congruous with them. Undoubtedly, the circulation of capital, people and technology
has contributed to the accelerated visibility of Latin American products. In
the cases of Chronicle of an Escape and Nias Mal the transnational determinants served to facilitate a mixture of local and global codes that guaranteed
national and cross over successes, respectively. The cases of Viaje Redondo and
the horror film in Argentina attest to a repositioning of genre, where locality
is re-inscribed at different levels and with distinct effects. Beyond economic
determinism, the inescapably transnational contexts of production, as much
as the hybrid forms of representation, throw variables to the industrial equation that make the circulation of Latin American culture through film more
multifaceted and less predictable.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My initial words of thanks go to Laura Podalsky, who compelled me to think
anew about contemporary genre films in Latin America. I am also indebted
to my colleagues Michael Deangelis and Gilberto Blasini, as much as to the
anonymous reviewers for their careful revisions of this manuscript. My gratitude goes as well to Carolyn Bronstein for her continuous encouragement.
The research and writing of this article was possible thanks to the generous
support of both DePaul Universitys Research Council and the College of
Communication.

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Suggested citation
Alvaray, L. (2013), Hybridity and genre in transnational Latin American
cinemas, Transnational Cinemas 4: 1, pp. 6787, doi: 10.1386/trac.4.1.67_1

CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS
Luisela Alvaray specializes in Latin American and transnational cinemas. She
teaches courses on Latin American cinema, global media, documentary studies, film history, and media and cultural studies. Her articles have appeared in
Cinema Journal, Film & History, Studies in Hispanic Cinemas, Emergences, Objeto
Visual (Caracas), Cinemais (Rio de Janeiro) and Film-Historia (Barcelona).
She is a contributor to the book Latin American Melodrama (Darlene Sadlier,
ed., 2009) and the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World (2008) and has
published two books in Spanish A la luz del proyector: Itinerario de una espectadora (2002) and Las versiones flmicas: los discursos que se miran (1994).
Contact: College of Communication, DePaul University, 1 E Jackson Blvd.,
Chicago, IL 60604, USA.
E-mail: lalvaray@depaul.edu
Luisela Alvaray has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format that
was submitted to Intellect Ltd.

87

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