Latinx Screens: Film, TV, and Video

Vampires Vs The Bronx and The Latinx Urban Space and Identity

Entry Question

Is your neighborhood gentrifying? What signs have you identified that make you think that way? Do these signs resemble the ones presented by Vampires Vs. the Bronx?

Stages of Gentrification

In the first, “pioneers” — often bohemians and artists — move to dilapidated or abandoned areas (as in governmental neglect) in search of cheaper rents; in the second, the middle classes follow; in the third, their numbers displace the original population; and in the final stage, the neighborhood is fully turned over to banks, developers and the wealthy. The fifth and last phase of gentrification is when neighborhoods aren’t just more friendly to capital than to people but cease being places to live a normal life.

Recommended Article:

Forget ‘The Bronx Is Burning.’ These Days, The Bronx Is Gentrifying

Oral/slide presentations

Hassan,Tazbiul

King,Briana

Lopez,Jacqueline

Group Discussion- Reading and Discussing Ed Morales’s The Latinx Urban Space and Identity

.Barrios (Pages 250-251)

How Vampires Vs. The Bronx illustrates the clashes between the barrio’s cultural memory and the actions of developers?

.Gentrification (Page 252)

What evidence do the characters of the film encounter that make them certain that they will not be included in the re-building of the Bronx? Why do they think that if they disappear nobody will notice?

.Afro-Latinidad and Urban Resistance (Pages 264; 267-268)

What coalition and solutions to gentrification Vampires Vs The Bronx proposes?