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CONFRONTING DOMINANT INSTITUTIONS OF
REPRESENTATION, OR MEDIA STUDIES AT
THE CURRENT CONJUNCTURE
Heroes, Lovers, and Others: The Story of Latinos in Hollywood.
By Clara E. Rodríguez. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2004.
xiv + 256 pp. Photos, bibliography, index. $26.95.
Reversing the Lens: Ethnicity, Race, Gender, and Sexuality Through
Film. Edited by Jun Xin and Lane Ryo Hirabayashi. Boulder: University
Press of Colorado, 2003. xv + 270 pp. Photos, illustrations, notes, index.
$45.00 (cloth); $19.95 (paper).
Curtis Marez
University of Southern California
One common feature of these
two works is their grounding in particular disciplinary and institutional
contexts. Heroes, Lovers, and Others is a Smithsonian Book, and so it
is framed by the Museum's complicated recent history with Latinos. In
1994, the Institution's Task Force on Latino Issues published the report
"Willful Neglect: The Smithsonian Institution and U.S. Latinos," and in
response the Museum launched a series of new initiatives. Hence, Heroes
is part of a larger set of efforts to redress the absence of Latinos/as
in the national museum of historical memory. It addresses such issues
by foregrounding particular performers, filmmakers, or film trends against
the backdrop of brisk and informative social histories. As a sociologist,
Rodrguez approaches Latino/a stars as members of a social class whose
life and work makes visible the conflicts and contradictions that other,
less visible Latinos/as have faced. She suggests, for example, that the
relative success of Latino/a stars during the silent period was made possible
by an economic boom in the United States that was partly dependent on
labor from Latin America. Similarly, in a chapter on the World War II
era, Rodrguez argues that demands for Latin American resources and markets
at the time stimulated collaborations between Hollywood and the state
in order to promote liberal democracy in Latin America.
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