Melodrama, Telenovela, and the New Latin American Women’s Picture

FQ columnist Manuel Betancourt examines how the Latin American tradition of melodrama is being reimagined by contemporary filmmakers in ways that reveal its ongoing relevance. Focusing on four recent films—Los adioses (The Eternal Feminine, dir. Natalia Beristáin, 2017), Amores modernos (Modern Loves, dir. Matías Meyer, 2020), La quietud (The Quietude, dir. Pablo Trapero, 2018), and A vida invisível (Invisible Life, dir. Karim Aïnouz, 2019)—Betancourt suggests that these recent riffs on the genre present fertile ground for narratives about how women’s agency and bodies remain tethered to patriarchal systems. Indeed, melodrama’s status as a gendered genre and association with women and their stories is central to its recuperation and reformulation in the twenty-first century as a means to reckon with national discourses about the family that may feel personal but are inherently political.

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From Abundance to Scarcity: Twenty-First-Century Latin American Dystopias

Review Literature and Arts of the Americas ◽

10.1080/08905762.2018.1485281 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 51 (1) ◽

pp. 7-13

Author(s):

Eduardo Becerra

Keyword(s):

Latin American ◽

First Century ◽

Twenty First Century

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Domestic Labor in Twenty-First Century Latin American Cinema, Elizabeth Osborne and Sofía Ruiz-Alfaro (eds) (2020)

Studies in Spanish & Latin-American Cinemas ◽

10.1386/slac_00040_5 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 18 (1) ◽

pp. 108-110

Author(s):

Andrea Meador Smith

Keyword(s):

Latin American ◽

First Century ◽

Domestic Labor ◽

American Cinema ◽

Latin American Cinema ◽

Twenty First Century

Review of: Domestic Labor in Twenty-First Century Latin American Cinema, Elizabeth Osborne and Sofía Ruiz-Alfaro (eds) (2020) Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 242 pp., ISBN 978-3-03033-295-2, h/bk, €103.99, e/bk, €85.59

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Manual Labor

Writing Pregnancy in Low-Fertility Japan ◽

10.21313/hawaii/9780824859886.003.0004 ◽

2016 ◽

Author(s):

Amanda C. Seaman

Keyword(s):

Social Enterprise ◽

Japanese Society ◽

Medical Profession ◽

First Century ◽

Manual Labor ◽

Due Date ◽

The Family ◽

Twenty First Century ◽

The Moment

The twenty-first century canonical pregnancy in Japan is one where from the moment of conception the incipient mother is molded internally and externally by both the medical profession and the advice manual industry. In two works, authors push back against the notion of canonical motherhood, by rejecting the idea of the mother-fetus dyad. Pregnancy they say is a social enterprise, demanding that the mother develop or strengthen bonds with her husband and family. In Kakuta Mitsuyo’s My Due Date is Jimmy Page’s Birthday (2007), she traces a conventional story of how a woman grows closer to her husband and family through her pregnancy. In Tadano Miako’s 2005 Three Year Pregnancy, her protagonist remains pregnant for three years while she works out her relationship with her husband, her mother, and finally her sister. These narratives reflect changes in Japanese society—the woman’s demand for the father’s participation in the family.

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Gothic Comedy

Twenty-First-Century Gothic ◽

10.3366/edinburgh/9781474440929.003.0014 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 189-202

Author(s):

Catherine Spooner

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Identity Politics ◽

First Century ◽

Right Wing ◽

Romantic Comedy ◽

Significant Function ◽

Politics Of Difference ◽

The Family ◽

Twenty First Century

Comedy has become an increasingly prevalent feature of Gothic in the twenty-first century, and thus Gothic comedy can be found across a multitude of media. This chapter surveys the kinds of comedy that appear in contemporary Gothic (such as sitcom, stand-up, romantic comedy, mock-documentary) and argues that, in the twenty-first century, Gothic comedy often functions to travesty culturally significant concepts of family, domesticity and childhood in the light of a liberal identity politics. Beginning with twentieth-century precedents such as television sitcom The Addams Family (1964–6) and Edward Gorey’s illustrations, the chapter analyses a range of contemporary texts including The League of Gentlemen (1999–2017), Corpse Bride (2005), Ruby Gloom (2006–8),Hotel Transylvania (2012) and What We Do in the Shadows (2014). It concludes that far from being frivolous or disposable, contemporary Gothic comedy forms a politically significant function in its tendency to undermine right-wing ideologies of the family and promote a celebratory politics of difference and inclusion.

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