Mexicanidad Meets Americanism: The Circulation of National Imaginaries and Generic Regimes between the Western and the Comedia Ranchera

Abstract

Peter W. Schulze discusses transregional cinematic flows between Hollywood and the Mexican film industry, using the example of two major genres; the American western and its Mexican counterpart, the comedia ranchera. Conceived as a paradigmatic study of cinematic “glocalisation” (Robertson), the essay traces some of the complex interconnections between the two genres and the “media capital” (Curtin) at work; it examines the circulation of stars and other film personnel and transnational cross-media synergies among film and music industries, as well as political interventions from governments and economic and technological interrelations between the respective (trans)national culture industries. Specific attention is paid to the negotiation of generic and cultural identities vis-à-vis intertwined globalising and localising processes. Both western and comedia ranchera have shaped national imaginaries to a degree that they appear to be quintessentially U.S. American or Mexican, respectively. Contrary to these “invented traditions” (Hobsbawm/Ranger), both the ‘national(ist)’ figures of the cowboy and the charro, who play central roles in the western and the ranchera culture, are far from being genuinely U.S. American or Mexican. Schulze traces their ‘multiple origins’ from early modern globalisation of equestrian culture to mid-20th century genre configurations in cinema, which has been a major catalyst in the globalisation of cultural economy. Although genre hybridisations and the “multiple generic identities” (Moine) of the western and the comedia ranchera are highlighted, the essay avoids the widespread “hybridist triumphalism as an end in itself” (Spivak). Schulze points out that when the comedia ranchera emerged in Mexico, affirmative discourses on mestizaje and the “raza cósmica” (Vasconcelos) may have prevailed in terms of the construction of a hybrid cultural identity with nation-building function. Nevertheless, intranational exclusions based on ethnicity, gender, class and regional belonging seem to be structurally inherent in the genre. Rather than being perceived as a ‘subversive’ quality, the generic and cultural hybridity of the comedia ranchera is grasped in the sense of a “postcolonial exotic” (Huggan); it is interpreted to be a form of folkloric autoexoticisation as a means of global commodification of cultural difference. This representational strategy proves to be aimed especially at the Latin American film market with its domination by Hollywood films, many of which capitalised on U.S. American folklore in the western genre.