In the essay “Colonialism, Racism, and Representation: an Introduction”, by Robert Stam and Louise Spence, specifically in the section “Some Definitions”, the authors say: “In response to such distortions [the one that the colonialism representation make], the Third World has attempted to write its own history, take control of its own cinematic image, speak in its own voice” (757). When I read this quote, I immediately thought about the contemporary Peruvian cinema and especially on one movie, La teta asustada (The Milk of Sorrow in English, which is not an exact translation; but this is another topic of discussion). This movie of 2009, directed by Claudia Llosa, almost wins the Oscar for the best international film.
I remember that I went to the cinema to see the movie almost immediately it was released. A great expectation surrounded the movie. I like very much the film. My first positive impression of the movie was that it breaks a terrible tradition in Peruvian cinema that was full of stereotypes (i.e. the people of “lower” classes were represented as vulgar or criminals). Claudia Llosa and her work, I think, have the three virtues that Sarris considers in his auteur theory (technical competence, a distinguished personality and “soul”).
However, I had certain dissatisfaction with the movie. Even it deconstructs some stereotypes, in some way it also reinforces one that is present in the Peruvian society: the people who come from the Andes to Lima have a big melancholic sentiment that makes them desperately hold to their traditions and reject Lima. In the movie, the main character (Fausta) and her family live in a small mountain (cerro) far from the city and they need to climb an enormous stair to get home (this, in fact, is the reality of many poor people in Lima that came escaping of the terror that the terrorist group “Sendero Luminoso” -and also the army- infused in the Andes). There, they try to reproduce some of their costumes and traditions. All these, along with other elements of the movie, give the sensation of isolation and rejection to Lima and its society.
In an article entitled “Una Heterogeneidad no dialéctica: sujeto y migrantes en el Perú moderno” [A Undialectical Heterogeneity: Subject and Migrants in the Modern Peru] (1996), by a renowned Peruvian literary critic, Antonio Cornejo-Polar, the author states that neither the position that says that the migrants are hold to their traditions and the one that says that they renounce to their traditions (the so called “aculturamiento” that Argueds rejects) and adopt the ones of Lima, are true. He talks about a mixture, a negotiation; a middle point, we can say. And there are examples, for instance, in the music. I agree with him and everyone that goes to Lima could see this mixture.
So, in the case of La teta asustada, the problem of present the migrants as melancholy and hold to their traditions could reinforce a racist and classist idea that still persists in the present in some groups of the middle and upper classes of Lima: the migrant is a strange “other”, an exotic that does not fit in the society. Therefore, is rejected and discriminated. And Lima continues to be an “arcadia colonial” (colonial arcadia), as the writer Sebastián Salazar-Bondy states in his famous essay Lima la horrible [Lima the horrible].
I have no doubt in the good intention of Claudia Llosa in criticize the Peruvian society showing it in a crude way. However, the kind of approach that she presents could be somehow a reinforcement for some racist and classist patterns that exists since the Colony. I think this case is a good example of what Stam and Spence also say in their article: “But this laudable intention [of women filmmakers to counterpoint the discourse of patriarchy] the Third World is not always unproblematic. ‘Reality’ is not self-evidently given, and ‘truth’ cannot be immediately captured by the camera” (757).
I want to finish saying that I recommend the movie. Despite the critique I have made, it is a very good film.
Here the link of the movie with English subtitles:
Here the link to the article of Cornejo-Polar. Unfortunately, it is only in Spanish:
http://www.cholonautas.edu.pe/modulo/upload/corn.pdf