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The last one…Las tres lecturas de esta semana fueron realmente interesantes y en general me gustaron, cada una describe algún evento, costumbre o idea de la cultura latinoamericana. Algo que me parece interesante y que se presenta principalmente …

The reading of this week illustrated each an aspect of popular culture. The first one by Gomez-Pena showed how “el Sup” Marcos has been turned into a figure of pop culture, a super hero. The second one explained how Jennifer Lopez is a "crossover celebrity". The last one showed insofar as Latinness could be recreated elsewhere than in Latin America. They showed new forms of popular culture, they displayed the revival of popular culture. They both present how Latin American culture (Indigenous leader, Puerto Rican body and salsa) could be mixed with modernity but also with the white culture.

The first reading is a perfect example of mix between tradition and modernity. In order to make his claims be heard, el Sup Marcos turned himself into a character, a super hero. He created like a myth around his real identity. He is a “performance artist”. All this mythology around Marcos created a kind of industry, as the author says: “At one point it became hard to draw the line between radical politics and pop culture, between solidarity and revolutionary consumerism.”  Popular culture means that culture is made by people so Marco’s myth has been constructed by people through what they watched on TV, what they read (for instance comics). The Superhero Marcos is a construction of the 21^th century. He is not the hero of a traditional legend but he is a modern one which means both a political leader but also a commercialized figure. Popular culture can’t be separated from commercialization and mass culture even if one could not reduce it to that.

The second reading by Beltran dealt with the notion of “crossover” celebrity referring to the case of Jennifer Lopez. I would like to focus on two particular ideas: the tension between “Latinization and Latinidad” and the representation of coloured people of “evoking and denying race simultaneously”. Beltran aimed at showing that Jennifer Lopez was one of the only Latina to assume her body and refuse to conform to Hollywood standards. She wanted to erase the differences between the Latinos, the Blacks and the White just by being herself. She wanted to express her real “latinidad” instead of being the Puerto Rican girl who looks like a white that’s why Beltran speaks about a tension between “Latinization and Latinidad”. Latinization means how to represent Latinos inside the white culture so it means that Latinos have to fill the criteria of how being a good Latino according to the white audience which is not the expression of their real identity. It’s the same idea when Beltran quotes Judith Mayne: “African American characters in films often evoke and deny race simultaneously serving as projection of white anxieties about race”. In a sense, the dominant white culture shape the representation of “nonwhite ethnicity in US popular culture”. What Beltran wants to show that that Jennifer Lopez built her own publicity claiming her pride to be Latina. She tried to extract herself from the western standards.

Finally, the last reading by Velasquez shows insofar as Latinness is conveyed through music. Latinness is a felling, a way of singing, of playing salsa. It is tied to the body but it doesn’t mean that only Latin American people know how to do, on contrary it is a way of behaving accessible to everybody. Latin American culture could be recreated everywhere in the world. However, Velasquez shows that people can’t prevent themselves from having cliché about Latin American culture. For instance, women playing salsa have to be sexy.           

It’s not the end of the Latin American popular culture but it is mixed with other cultures that is why it is precisely “popular”. People live in a global world. Borders are crossed all the times so people could pick their culture, they could reinvent it anytime.    

I really liked this weeks readings regarding the history of futbol and prominent futbol players in Latin America. The videos that we watched in class furthered my understanding as well. I believe this topic was so interesting to me because it was easil…

I really enjoyed the readings we did this week. Despite knowing that all the stuff we covered earlier in the term was still prevalent to culture, I feel like the things that are talked about in this articles (Zapatista movement, Latina celebrity and salsa music) by Guillermo are closer the preconceived notions of culture I had thought of before this class when dealing with Latin America. Obviously after being through this course I know that these are not the only things that constitute culture, but instead a multitude of things can be considered cultural.

It was humorous to read about Jennifer Lopez’s rear end in a scholarly situation. At times however, I felt like these articles only covered surfaces issues in popular culture, instead of getting into deeper social issues. When looking at the salsa music article argument, that salsa music crossed borders from Latin America to the UK, many social constructed were perpetuated through the songs. For instance many drew conclusions that Caucasian performers were musically talented, while stereotyping Latin performers as more rhythmic and therefore they must have played drums and percussion instruments.

In the article that focused on JLO moving to North American main stream, the issue of stereotyping genders were highlighted. Jennifer Lopez’s success and sex symbol status in America challenged the thought that in order to be beutifle you had to be thin, as she is not that thing but more voluptuous. The fact that Jennifer Lopez was considered beautiful with her large butt challenged these views.

What I gathered from all three articles was that culture is not easily defined but is easy to create, through social construction. The Zapatista movement leader formulated a character to present himself in public light and the movement was called a performance. JLO was successful because Hollywood constructing her image in the media. Salsa music is something that anyone can learn as long as they have instruction (or construction) from a trained individual, even then it does not necessarily mean that they are performing it right, and in many cases people can become better than their masters. It is even easier to how these movements can be consider popular culture, as they tend to cross many boarders, in Latin America, but more importantly the world. In the end does this mean that culture is becoming popular culture and the loss of individuality, I think not. Instead I think that certain items, performances and icons will always be considered Latin it is just a matter of the disperses that they get in the rest of the world.

It seems clear to me that these last three articles, under the heading “the end of popular culture?” are directly dealing with issues of the embodied experience. The way that the body can naturally be sexualized, ethnically classified, hierarchically organized and gendered exists in all these articles. Part of this embodiment paradigm is […]

Now, this I did not see coming… Though I am not going to say that I did not find the article interesting… I must admit I definitely did not expect to talk about JLo’s butt in this class. However, I think this article by Mary Beltran is a good continuation for the Hybridity topic. If […]

THANKS JON!!! This weeks readings were great! Especially Mary C. Beltran’s piece on Jennifer Lopez’s “Cross-over Butt”. I really enjoyed it because of how clearly Beltran articulated herself. She was so critical and yet so clear. It was definitely a w…

I really enjoyed the readings this week, especially the first two! I find that when some sort of story is being told, I have a much easier time following along. The first article is a short and concise essay about Marcos and the Zapatistas (indigenous …

I found Bellos’s paper on futebol to be very intersting. The represenation and meaning behind futebol in Latin America became very aparent to me and its outstanding powers on the public, the players, countries as a whole and invevitably the world in on…

Definitely enjoyed the readings for this week!Although I now understand that folktales, folk art & theories of mixture can and should be considered in discussions of popular culture, I feel like the subject matter of this weeks readings (Zapatista …

This weeks topic  was examining if there is an end or has been an end of popular culture. In the first article by Guillermo was on the Zapatistas in Mexico. It talks about its intertwined realation with the media and how that relationship is so powerf…

In the first article they talk about this “super hero” figure that was developed in Mexico, he was a fighter for his believes, but did the people that followed him had the same ideology? or did they follow him just because “he is cool”? Also you can se…

The three articles for this week are all related in that they deal with the globalization of culture. The first talks about how El Sup and the Zapatistas used international media as a launchpad for their movement, effectively creating a mythology that…

I loved the readings this week! What a great way to end the semester. The three articles we were assigned this week all dealt with contemporary expressions of Latin American culture that I can relate to on a more personal level. Having spent time in Oaxaca.. Zapatista country, been a die-hard fan of the fly […]

I liked the readings for this week. The first one talks about the Zapatista movement in Chiapas. Just as the author says, Sub commandant Marcos and the Zapatista leaders are very intelligent in order to know how to use the media to get their message a…

“Canadian consumers buy cars from Germany, Germans take holidays in Italy, Italians buy spices from Africa, Africans import oil from Kuwait, Kuwaitis buy Japanese cameras, and the Japanese buy Canadian lumber.” This quote from my macroeconomics textboo…

This whole idea of hybridity, proposed by Canclini seems problematic to me. Not necessarily the way I had conceived of hybridity before, in thinking about different types of pea plants, and the outcomes of their cross pollination, but in the way that Canclini seems to posit it at a meeting of two distinctly different and […]

 

 

 

The first article regarding popular culture as mass culture is “The Fateful Final” about the world cup final between Brazil and Uruguay in 1950 in which Uruguay beats Brazil in the final 12 minutes of the game. Football in Brazil is a major/mass pastime that acts almost as a national religion. When I was younger I played soccer for 13 years and my team won the BC provincials one year. Throughout this article I could really imagine this fate full game and the emotions that came with it. To some extent at least I can identify with the change in mentality that you have when playing as well as when you’re watching a game from the sidelines. The strong connections between team players and their desire to win can bring everyone into the present, forgetting past and future and simply being in the now. This is an amazing power of sports, and extremely difficult to do when you are in your daily life. Anyways, I guess I can say that if you have never played in team sports and the amount of emotion and intensity that is written about in this article might seem weird and excessive (which it very well might be). But there is something to be said for experiencing the act of being in team sports or even just watching. I feel like it does bring people together creating a sense of community whether that is in a small town and a group of children, or on the national level. I guess what the author of this article exemplifies how nations as big as Brazil can come together as an imagined community, all intimately connected. In the article I became aware of the extent of the emotions that were on high at the Maracana. The emotions could be defined as almost scary or fanatical with a sort of mob mentality that I would probably want to stay away from. However I did think it was interesting to learn that only one person got knocked over when leaving the Maracana after the game and that violence was minimal.

 

In the second article, “Big Snakes on the Streets and Never Ending Stories” we learn of Venezuelan Telenovelas, another form of popular culture as mass culture.

The telenovela is popular all around Latin America and “is the main source of support for several television channels in Latin America”.  We learn about novellas on the radio in the 1900s and their influence on telenovelas of today. You can go back farther and trace the telenovela to “popular forms, beginning with the folletin, or newspaper serioal, itself transitiona…”(pg67) It continues to evolve as a genre, acquiring different nuances in different countries. Most of them however are organized and produced in a similar way… “a story in which a man and a woman fall madly in love, but before they can live happily ever after, they have to overcome a series of obstacles.”(pg69)

 

 

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..Hibridación…La lectura de esta semana del escritor argentino Néstor García Canclini describe una teoría más del mestizaje: hibridación. Se me ha complicado un poco encontrar la diferencia entre hibridación y transculturación. En la lectura …

I had a difficult time for a while trying to pick out of the article what exactly the author’s definition of ‘hybrid culture’ was. Not that the article was not interesting throughout, but until the end I was not all that clear on his meaning.
 
It was interesting to read about Canclini’s take on the […]

Nestor Garcia Canclini’s article entitled “ Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity”, talks manily about the development of urban dwellings. They have become microcosms of interweaving and fragmented: humans, land and culture. Cities offer a paradigm for culture and power, and create many opposing thoughts of humankind. Latin American cities scenarios make one perceive both the amalgamation and separation in both high and popular culture. Much global modernity phenomenon in the trends and creation of popular culture is able to be viewed, many of these stratifications of art is impossible to get to and not necessary. A hybrid happens in these forms of art that is more generically termed ‘post-modernism’.By pointing out interesting issues, like the figurative bond between urban and rural spheres in the view of the ever increasing mass media prevalent in most nations today Canclini shows us what one may see when going to a Latin American country. Many of the countries I have been to in Latin America have supported this thought process, much of television broadcasting either has some or a large portion of influence on the style, language and goals of the country and its people. Canclini then goes on to talk about urban reflections, by using examples from national monuments, statues and urban artwork to show the ways in which history and modernity interact on the canvas that is the streets. Other examples of folk and art works tend to be display in museums and usually in areas of ‘high culture’, while the public areas and monuments is where the real contention court lies. Page two hundred and thirty one provides an excellent example for how the author proposes an alternative look at contesting and contention in public areas through the viewpoint of popular culture representations. In the last paragraph of this chapter, the author makes this contesting even clearer between lack of public initiative, acknowledging the symbolism these monuments perform (i.e. creating politeness and conflict) and a detachment from political issues. The most interesting part of Canclinis work, or at least I found to be, is when he discusses the significance of urban graffiti art and the ways in which it allows for imagery to be altered, distorted and rebuild visual realities. Other things  such as comic books, which the author also points out, can have a humoristic approach to speak about the dominant and orthodox view forms.  

 

In Nestor Garcia Canclini’s article, he explores the popularization of folk culture. It was thought that modernization would erase folklore, but instead it has transformed it. The “popular-traditional” has been adopted by the elite culture and the culture industry, in such a way that it is commodified and mass-produced. Facing unemployment, many people turn to making artisans to make a living, or as an way to make a little extra income. Artisans make up apparently “ 18 percent of the economically active population” of Latin America, a number that is surprising as many would think that culture was being eroded by the globalization of Western (mainly American) culture. Now, people whose communities never made handicrafts, or only did for their own personal use, are making them as part of the culture industry. Governments continue to promote the productions of such artisanal work despite the fact that it does not add to the GDP. In places like Mexico, stores dedicated solely to the sale of souvenirs are everywhere, heavily concentrated, obviously, in the tourist destinations that are frequented by Americans. Staying at a Club Med, people can own a little piece of “real”, “authentic” Latin America that they bought in the resort’s gift shop, without even having to venture out into the street.  Folklore is not only catered as a commodity for tourists, however, as states use traditional or popular symbols to reach the population. Nestor Garcia Canclini states that different sectors use folk culture “to affirm their identity, stress a national;-popular political definition or the distinction of a cultivated taste with traditional roots” (154). Through the modernization of communication networks, states can use traditional symbols, dances, festivals, etc to reach all levels of the population, regardless of geographical location or socioeconomic standing. Communities also use folk culture as a way to communicate with the people, to tell history and to teach morality. So, although traditional culture is often produced for the volumes of tourists wishing to take home a little piece of their trip, modernization has allowed traditions to keep being practiced by the population, even if they have been transformed.

Before reading Canclini’s few chapters I thought I had a pretty good idea of what hybridity, as a theory of mixture, would be. I thought that it would be a lot like transculturation except more diverse, less one whole process. In a way, this isn’t an…

This article was somewhat confusing.  However, there is one point that Canclini makes that I agree in part with, but not totally.Canclini says that the state uses folk culture to attract tourists.  On many levels, I agree with this.  I think that in…

Ever heard that popular saying out there that goes something like this: “Kiss French, Dress Italian, Drive German”? Well that’s the first thing I thought when I say the word Hybridity. Why? I am not sure, all I know is that for me people have always try to adopt things from other places…. the grass […]

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