Well, well, well. After three months, we have finally approached the end of this course. During this time, I can honestly say that I learned a lot. It got to the point where I telling my girlfriend about Peronism in Argentina. I’m not a big culture guy so for me to enjoy this course speaks a lot about this course. Looking at the title I can see that we have come full circle in regards to the topic. From “what is culture” to the “theories of mixture” and now to “the end of popular culture?”.

When reading Guillermo Gomez-Pena’s “In Search of a New Topography”, the first thing that came to mind was Big Foot. Big Foot came up first because of all the mystery surrounding it. Like Marco, Big Foot is something that became engrained in popular culture even though no one really knew what it looked like. Furthermore, if Big Foot was actually revealed, the mysticism surrounding Big Foot would disappear and the intrigue would disappear, just like what happened to Marco after he revealed himself to be just an ordinary citizen from Northern Mexico. For me, it just goes to show that once the mystery gets answered, interest surrounding this elusive object subsides.

When reading Mary C. Beltran’s “The Hollywood Latina Body as Site of Social Struggle: Media Constructions of Stardom and Jennifer Lopez’s ‘Cross-Over Butt’”, I found this article particularly interesting because it talks about how Hollywood is a white-dominated industry. “It also is notable that direct mention of Lopez’s ethnicity appears to have been downplayed in the English-language press during this period, while it unsurprisingly was emphasized in the Spanish-language press” This sentence perfectly resembles what it is like to be a minority in Hollywood. Hollywood would normalize Lopez by emphasizing her upbringing in the Bronx, as opposed to her Puerto Rican heritage. Although Hollywood has incorporated more minorities in recent years, it has largely stayed a white industry.

And with this, I conclude my last blog. LAST 201 has been a pleasant surprise not only in terms of the class but also the material. It’s been real guys and I wish everyone the best of luck on the finals!

When I first signed up for this course, I thought that we were going to talk about Latin American pop artists, football, and movies. But low and behold, we ended up talking about something almost completely different from what I thought we were going to study. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy learning about the history of Latin America and what it has gone through to become the region it is today. For this week’s readings, we finally touch upon popular culture as mass culture. To be honest, if you were to ask me before the start of this class on the difference between mass culture and popular culture, I would probably not have been able to come up with an answer. In my mind, I thought that what was popular must have appealed to the masses as well. However, throughout the course, I have been proven wrong time and time again.

In Nelson Hippolyte Ortega’s “Big Snakes on the Street and Never Ending Stories: The Case of Venezuelan Telenovas”, I found it interesting how something predominantly Latin American was able to be popular in many places elsewhere. In the first sentence, Nelson sums up what the telenova means to Latin America. “The telenova is an important expression of Latin American popular culture not only because of its success with the public, but also because it reflects the public’s symbolic and affective world. I am informed on how that the difference between North American soap opera and traditional telenova is the motive. In North American soap operas, the central motivations are money and sex whereas in traditional telenovas, the motivation is to fall in love, marry and have children. During my readings, it occurred to me that for the first half of this course, we talked about how Latin America borrowed elements of different cultures in order to make their own. However, with telenovas, we see how North America drew inspiration from Latin America and tried to recreate it for their own audiences.

I wasn’t able to finish “Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life” by Alex Bellos, but I am excited to talk about it in class and learn more about it!

Part two of Theories of Mixture! So, in the first part, we talked about mestizaje and its implications. What it meant, how it was achieved and how it was important to Latin American culture. Now, in the second part, we are introduced to a somewhat new topic. Transculturation. We somewhat touched upon this topic in class in which we said transculturation was how two cultures (e.g. indigenous and Spanish) assimilated various elements of each other’s culture to make something fresh.

In Mark Millington’s readings, he mentioned how mestizaje has now become generally confined to discussions of racial mixing while transculturation and hybridization where more in favor nowadays. However, he drew a clear distinction on how while transculturation and hybridization are similar, they mean different things. Transculturation, he said had a distinct Latin American identity and was rarely employed outside that context. On the other hand, hybridization had a more global reference to it. Although I have yet to fully unpack the difference of the two meanings in a way that I can understand, I definitely find this area of topic interesting. Maybe because the length of the readings were a bit more manageable.

I found that this reading had a few similar ideas that Rowe & Schelling talked about in their “The Faces of Popular Culture”. For example, Rowe & Schelling talked about how Mexico had their process of acculturation be more complete. I will need to reread the two readings but this is what I have for now! Thanks for reading guys!

Finally! After six weeks, we finally get to the part where we talk about art and its relationship to culture. This was what I thought was culture the entire time… But clearly, I was wrong. In Bruce Campbell’s “Mexican Muralism and the Official Public Sphere”, there was a sentence that struck a chord within me. That sentence was “Mural art falls victim to censorious government officials uncomfortable with the content of images”. I drew parallels with this sentence because it reminded me of how China was and probably still is. I remember my mother telling me that during the Cultural Revolution, many temples, paintings, and books were destroyed. This destruction of culture was also brought forth by the censorious Chinese government.

On page 58, I found the measures taken by the Mexican government to be very similar to the United States. During the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt commissioned many artists to create public works of art. And in Mexico, the Mexican government commissioned mural art for public housing projects, hospitals, public work projects, and newly constructed buildings. From what I read so far (this may be wrong), I see a very strong tie between Mexico and its murals. Through the ages, as society changes, Mexican muralism also takes on a new public life. I never knew Mexico was that passionate about the arts but after reading this reading, it really opened my eyes. For example, with the SEP, they built 1,159 schools and 455 new libraries in a span of 2 years!! Furthermore, the minister told reporters of El Universal: “It is my conviction that many of our present and modest architectural endeavors will be remembered thanks to the painters who have decorated them. Architects should feel elated at their good fortune at working in the midst of an artistic renaissance.”

Before even reading the articles, I was a little confused. Looking at the header in which they were placed under, I couldn’t really grasp what the reading was hinting at. “Theories of Mixture 1: Mestizaje”. I had no clue what that meant. To me, it sounded like a potion book or something of the sort. However, once I got into the reading, it finally came clear to me. When reading “Rethinking Mestizaje: Ideology and Lived Experience” by Peter Wade, the first word that stuck out to me in the text was “Mestizaje”. And it was there that I finally got a definition of that peculiar word. The notion of racial and cultural mixture; that is what mestizaje means. After finding out that, everything seemed to piece together. I understood what this had to do with our course and why I was reading this on a snowy Sunday evening.

Peter Wade’s article went into depth on the history of the mestizaje and how it came about. I found it interesting when it mentioned that mestizaje was an ‘all-inclusive ideology of exclusion’. Which basically meant a system of ideas that appeared to include everyone but excluded blacks and indigenous people. When reading this article, it occurred to me that there was never such a phenomenon when other regions where conquered by the Europeans. However, this might be due to my lack of history knowledge. For example, when the Spaniards conquered the Philippines in 1521, I don’t recall there being any large sharing of cultures. But then again, it might be because I haven’t gotten there yet in this course.

When reading “The Cosmic Race” by Jose Vasconcelos, it seemed to me that he was doing a lot of comparing between the Latins and Anglo-Saxons. He says that “Our age became, and continues to be, a conflict of Latinism and Anglo-Saxonism. Shockingly, after reading the logic behind what he says, I can definitely see where he is coming from.