Latinx Screens: Film, TV, and Video

Vampires Vs. The Bronx is a comedy-horror hybrid that pokes fun at the extinction and displacement many diasporic communities of color are facing right now in major cities by corporate forces. It follows a group of teenagers of Caribbean descent who are forced to protect their neighborhood in the Bronx when a group of vampires/gentrifiers invades.

ASYNCHRONOUS ASSIGNMENT (Deadline: 10/12 before the class)

Instructions:

1. Watch the film Vampires Vs. The Bronx (Osmany Rodriguez, 2020) on Netflix

2. In the comment section down below answer ONE of the following prompts (2oo-words minimum).

OPTION ONE

An allegory is a narrative in which a character, place, or event is used to deliver a broader socio-political message about real-world issues and occurrences. Discuss the allegory of corporate gentrifiers as vampires.

Refer to specific characters, scenes, and/or the plot.

OPTION TWO

How the movie proposes a trans-Caribbean unity to “save the neighborhood” and protect the needs of the Bronx residents.

OPTION THREE

Analyze how Vampires vs the Bronx flip common horror mise en scene elements (make-up; wardrobe; special effects; lighting; props) to highlight the contrasting presence of gentrifiers and as comedy tools.

OPTION FOUR

Respectfully interact with ONE of your classmates’ responses. Do you agree with their arguments and interpretations? Do you disagree? What other observations about Vampires Vs The Bronx do you want to bring into the discussion?

Entry Question

What topics from the films and critical texts we have discussed during the first half of the semester would you like to see included in the midterm? Would you like to propose a question?

When Does Resistance Begin? Queer Immigrant and U.S-Born Latino Youth, Identity and the Infrapolitics of the Street

In her essay, associate professor, urban ethnographer, and educational researcher, Cindy Cruz examines the small and deliberate practices of queer youth toward their caseworkers, security guards, and each other. She proposes that observing these practices aids to expand the notion of resistance. She recognizes resistance when youth refuse the logic of domination and share knowledge in ways that suggest new kinds of socialities. She argues that these new socialities have the possibility to become spaces where queer youth can practice new sensibilities and ways of being as they negotiate through the often hostile worlds they traverse. (289-90)

Overlapping Keywords

.Resistance- it happens when youth say no to the alternatives they are offered in worlds where they are brutalized and oppressed or to the narratives that emerge within these oppressive spaces. Queer Latino youth might resist using the smallest of gestures. (291)

.Resistant socialities- off-stage (non-institutional) practices of queer Latinx youth; breathing spaces, however tight, for youth to reclaim energy, regroup, and create safe space; small deviation from the logic of oppression. (292)

.Hidden transcript- the space of rest and leisure, a place to gossip about your caseworkers, teachers, and the ever-present security guards in Spanish, Spanglish, or English. It is also a place for youth to exchange valuable information about how institutions, organizations, worksites, schools, and youth centers, work (297)

Oral Presentations on Gun Hill Road and “When Does Resistance Begin?”

Gil,Debora

Grechka,Inna V

Hart I,Elise Hope

Group Discussion

Think of all the different spaces Vanessa, the young trans woman presented in Gun Hill Road, “traverse.” How do these spaces differentiate? In which ones she feels safe? In which spaces she engages in resistance?

Conclusion

The socialities of resistance that youth develop for survival are vital spaces where the potential to learn new ways of negotiating these hostile worlds can also become places to learn multiple sensibilities and new ways of engaging their world(s) that offer liberatory possibilities. When queer Latino street youth move away or refuse to continue to engage with abusive partners, share technology and vital digital information with each other or question the pedagogy of research, I argue that it is here that resistance begins. (317)

Instead of staying silent, invisible, passive, youth talk back, share knowledge, and practice ways of knowing and being that have the potential for other kinds of emancipatory praxis. (318)

Recommended Interview

 

 

In this film written and directed by Rashaad Ernesto Green, a Puerto Rican ex-con, Enrique, returns home to the Bronx to find that his wife Angela has had an affair while he was away, and his child is exploring a gender transformation that tests his notions of masculinity, gender, sexuality, and the bonds of family.

ASYNCHRONOUS ASSIGNMENT (Deadline: 10/5 before the class)

Instructions:

1. Watch the film Gun Hill Road (Rashaad Ernesto Green, 2011)

2. In the comment section down below answer ONE of the following prompts (175-words minimum).

OPTION ONE

In Gun Hill Road the different characters have their own distinct understanding of gender and sexuality. How the film addresses with nuance the topics of machismo, trans lives, and role definition within a Nuyorican family and Latinx community?

OPTION TWO

Discuss how performance poetry and her chosen queer community helps Vanessa navigate her gender transformation while she faces transphobia and bigoted views?

OPTION THREE

How lighting and the use of close-ups in this scene enhance the emotional struggles and ties of the different characters? Discuss both mise en scene elements and content.

OPTION FOUR

Respectfully interact with ONE of your classmates’ responses. Do you agree with their points and interpretations? Do you disagree? What other observations about Gun Hill Road do you want to bring to the discussion?

Entry Question

Filmmaker and Caribbean and Puerto Rican Studies scholar, Frances Negrón-Muntaner, reads Basquiat through a “popular boricua logic.” She argues that contrary to general belief Basquiat’s actions were “not irrational.” She considers that they “bear a great resem­blance to Puerto Rican laborers’ resistance to capital’s demands” In specific she identifies that similarily his “sense of personal dignity seemed to clash often with the requirements of the work discipline.” (121-22)

What do you think Negrón-Muntaner is trying to convey?

Introduction

Few figures from this—or indeed any—era embody the torment of becoming a commodity as a racialized subject more intensely than the Brooklyn-born son of a Haitian accountant and a Puerto Rican art lover, the painter Jean-Michel Basquiat.

 

Centered on a rare interview that director and friend Tamra Davis shot with Jean-Michel Basquiat more than 30 years ago, this documentary chronicles the meteoric rise and fall of the young Afro Caribbean artist. The film looks at how in the marginalized New York City of the 70s with Puerto Rican artist Al Diaz, Basquiat covered the city with the graffiti tag and writings ‘SAMO.’ In 1981 he put paint on canvas for the first time, and by 1983 he was an artist with global status. He achieved critical and commercial success, though he was constantly confronted by racism from some of his peers and art institutions.

ASYNCHRONOUS BLOG POST (Deadline: 9/28 before the class)

Instructions:

1. Watch the documentary Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child(Tamra Davis, 2010)

2. In the comment section down below answer ONE of the following prompts (2o0-words minimum).

OPTION ONE

Discuss the integration and dialogues of Afro-diasporic, Puerto Rican, Haitian, and/or Latinx arts within Jean-Michel Basquiat’s work by referencing scenes or sequences from the documentary.

OPTION TWO

Compare Basquiat’s beginnings as a downtown interdisciplinary artist with his eventual experiences as an Afro-diasporic painter in the predominantly white-owned art market.

OPTION THREE

Select and analyze the function of two different documentary techniques in Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child (archival footage or images; Basquiat’s testimonies; interviews; montage; analysis of paintings; soundtrack). How do these techniques add nuance and complexity to the artist’s portrait?

OPTION FOUR

Respectfully interact with ONE of your classmates’ responses. Do you agree with their arguments and interpretations? Do you disagree? What other observations about Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child do you want to bring into the discussion?

Entry Question 

Before watching The Get Down and/or reading “Between Blackness and Latinidad in the Hip Hop Zone” did your conception of Hip Hop included other cultural groups besides African-Americans? Why? Why not?

A Hip Hop Definition

Raquel Z. Rivera, Puerto Rican author of New York Ricans from the Hip Hop Zone, argues that “hip hop is most often historically defined in terms of music, visual arts (graffiti), and dance (breaking, popping, locking, rocking). Language, mannerisms, fashion, and other expressions of culture are considered by some to also be defining aspects of hip hop. Hip hop, like earlier cultural expressions, has in many senses served as a bridge between Puerto Ricans, other Latina/os, West Indians, and African Americans.” (354)

Davey D Cook, an African American who grew up during this time in the South Bronx, explains: “Hip Hop was multicultural in the sense that it was Blacks and Puerto Ricans who put this whole thing down. We lived next to each other and for the most part shared the same urban problems. We also shared the same legacy of exploitation, oppression, and colonization. (354)

(Watch from 33:40-40:55)

Oral/ Slide Presentation on The Get Down and the essay “Between Blackness and Latinidad in the Hip Hop Zone”

Caruso,Carty

In her essay, “Between Blackness and Latinidad in the Hip Hop Zone,” Raquel Z. Rivera argues that the Puerto Rican input to Hip Hop has been depreciated or plainly erased because of ethnic and racial constructions in the U.S., the Caribbean, and Latin America. There is a marketing factor to the Puerto Rican exclusion. The U.S. music industry and the media centralized English-speaking African Americans over Puerto Ricans and Latinxs. But Rivera also posits that although conceived as multi-cultural and multi-racial, the Puerto Rican and Latinx identities (formed collectively,) tend to reject the African heritage while celebrating Europeanness. This social process has created a false cultural divide between African Americans and Puerto Ricans. (352)

Group Discussion 

How The Get Down shows this joint Afro Diasporic cultural movement? Which characters represent better the cross-cultural dynamics of Hip Hop as describe by Raquel Z. Rivera?

Creator and the director of the pilot, Baz Luhrmann, and a team of collaborators -Catherine Martin, MC Nas, DJ Grandmaster Flash, playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis, and hip-hop historian Nelson George – set The Get Down as a music-driven drama that documents the emergence of a new art form. Set in the late 1970s, when New York was at the brink of bankruptcy, the rise of hip-hop is told through the lives, art, music, and dance of a group of young people in the South Bronx.

 

ASYNCHRONOUS ASSIGNMENT (Due on 9/21 before the class)

Instructions:

1. Watch the first episode of the Netflix show The Get Down: “Where There Is Ruin, There Is Hope for a Treasure.”

2. In the comment section down below answer ONE of the following prompts (200-word minimum).

OPTION ONE

Describe the different artistic engagements of intersecting Nuyorican and Black communities in the Bronx that led to the creation of Hip Hop culture? Refer to specific characters and scenes from the first episode of The Get Down.

OPTION TWO

Hip Hop parties became healing spaces to deal with the marginalization and turf wars in the Bronx. Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Refer to the title of the episode and to specific scenes from the first episode of The Get Down 

OPTION THREE

Analyze the elements of mise en scene in this scene

How does the director uses the setting, lighting, costumes, props, camera, and/or actor movements or positions to portrait Ezekiel’s potential as a poet/MC?

OPTION FOUR

Respectfully interact with ONE of your classmates’ responses. Do you agree with their arguments and interpretations? Do you disagree? What other observations about The Get Down do you want to bring into the discussion?

Entry Question

Have you seen similar disinvestment as the one presented in the documentary in your borough or neighborhood? What are some common signs of this urban marginalization?

.What are the central ideas of this writer, thinker, and/or filmmaker?

In the documentary Decade of Fire, Vivian Vásquez look at how during the 70s the systemic disenfranchisement of the Bronx as well as the criminalization of black, Puerto Rican, Caribbean, and Latinx people contributed to the literal burning of the borough and further displacement of these historically marginalized communities. Using Vasquez’s account, the filmmakers also pay attention to the ways grassroots organizing led to an ongoing project of revitalization, cultural affirmation, and sustainability.

5:15-11:00

.Analyze one specific section of the film with an excerpt by your assigned author that best communicates what you identified in the question above. What analogies and critical connections can you establish between the audiovisual work and the essay?

Necropolis- J. Chang (Page 13)

https://youtu.be/tRdZFPMZDc4

38:00-42:00

Both Chang and the filmmakers bring evidence of how landlords benefitted from burning their own buildings to collect insurance money. They proposed that this type of corrupt economy went on for many years with no accountability of repercussions against those who destroyed and displaced whole communities in the South Bronx.

.Select one specific element of mise-en-scene (costume, lighting, camera frames or movements, sound, music, actors’ movements, or positions) and examine how this artistic choice enhances or adds nuance to the central concerns of the audiovisual piece.

A mise en scene element that stands out from the documentary is the use of maps with archival footage to demonstrate and see the scale of its arguments (see 12:00-13:40 /  42:00-43:00). In these two sections we see on one side how redlining was part of a concerted effort of the state, the city, developers, and insurance companies to neglect black and Latinx communities, and on the other side, the amount of money made from the fires.

.Pose a critical question about the audiovisual piece or the essay to the group.

What were some of the community initiatives against the “mathematics of destruction” (Chang 14) that stood out for you? How the current wave of gentrification in the Bronx is connected to this story? (01:08:00-01:11:00)

Throughout the 1970s, fires consumed the South Bronx. Black and Puerto Rican residents were blamed for the devastation even as they battled daily to save their neighborhoods. In DECADE OF FIRE, Bronx-born Vivian Vázquez Irizarry pursues the truth surrounding the fires – uncovering policies of racism and neglect that still shape our cities, and offering hope to communities on the brink today.

-from the Official Website

ASYNCHRONOUS ASSIGNMENT (Due on 9/14 before the class)

Instructions:

1. Watch the documentary Decade of Fire (Gretchen Hildebran and Vivian Vásquez, 2018)

2. In the comment section down below answer ONE of the following prompts (2o0-words minimum).

OPTION ONE

Discuss specific policies (laws), political or corporate decisions, and/or examples of media representation, that led to the neglect and extreme marginalization of the Bronx during the 1970s.

Refer to scenes and concrete issues presented by the filmmakers.

OPTION TWO

Elaborate on some of the grassroots efforts and community activism that ended the fires.

Refer to scenes, concrete actions, and solutions presented by the filmmakers.

OPTION THREE

Select and analyze the function of two different documentary techniques in Decade of Fire (voice-over narration; archival footage or images; interviews; montage; animation). How do these techniques help to convey the results of the filmmakers’ historical research?

DOCUMENTARY TECHNIQUES

OPTION FOUR

Respectfully interact with ONE of your classmates’ responses. Do you agree with their arguments and interpretations? Do you disagree? What other observations about Decade of Fire do you want to bring into the discussion?

Camera Shots and Angles

What mise en scene elements Gregory Nava, the director of Selena, and his collaborators use to convey: a) Selena’s relatability (everydayness; b) social classes, elitism, and ethnic prejudices; c)Selena’s level of success within the music industry?