Domestic Labor in Twenty-First Century Latin American Cinema

This volume explores the character of the domestic worker in twenty-first century Latin American cinema and analyzes how recent filmic representations of the housemaid question the marginalization of domestic servants, in particular women, by making them the center of their narratives, their families, and society. The essays in this book posit the female domestic worker as an emergent subjectivity, a complex character who problematizes and contests the hierarchical power structures within the family dynamics and new socioeconomic orders found in contemporary Latin America.

Readers will find a variety of representations across the continent as well as transnational commonalities of the cinematic figure and role of the housemaid, including the negotiation of a multilayered politics of affection in the framework of prevalent paternalism, and the complex and contradictory dynamic between private and public spaces, where domestic paid labor occupies a central role in maintaining gender, class, and ethnic inequalities.

The first book-length study of the representation of female domestic labor in Latin American film Includes analyses of films from Mexico, Colombia, Perú, Chile, Argentina, and Brazil Explores how figures in the discussed films transcend their functional roles and become complex subjects that problematize hierarchical power structures within family and new socioeconomic orders

Autorentext

Elizabeth Osborne, PhD, is Assistant Professor in the Department of World Languages, Worcester State University, USA. Sofía Ruiz-Alfaro, PhD, is Associate Professor in the Department of Spanish and Linguistics, Franklin and Marshall College, USA.

Inhalt

Introduction - Elizabeth Osborne and Sofía Ruiz-Alfaro.- 1. Restoring Names, Stories, and Voices for Cinematographic Maids: Toward a New Poetics of Domestic Service in Recent Argentine Films - María Julia Rossi.- 2. Moving beyond Maternalism: Negotiating Models of Womanhood in La Nana, Cama adentro, and Hilda - Elizabeth Osborne.- 3. Leftovers No More: Affect, Food and Power in Recent Latin American Films on Domestic Work - Karina Elizabeth Vázquez.- 4. Serious Camp: Juan Gabriel's Queer Repertoire in Qué le dijiste a Dios? - Olivia Cosentino.- 5. Defamiliarizing the Maid: Alicia Scherson's Play - Susana Domingo Amestoy.- 6. Beyond Tropes: Otherness and the Identity of the Brazilian Maid in Domésticas-O Filme and Doméstica - Maurício Sellman Oliveira.- 7. Partial Affection: The Place(s) of Female Domestic Workers in Recent Brazilian Cinema - Carlos Cortez Minchillo.- 8. Domestic Labor and the Crisis of Care in La tierra y la sombra and La Sirga - Marcelo Carosi.- 9. Domestic Matters: Hollywood and the Politics of Representing la doméstica in Babel and Cake - Sofía Ruiz-Alfaro.- 10. Filmography - Kerry Moynihan.