Badmen, Bandits, and Folk Heroes: The Ambivalence of Mexican American Identity in Literature and Film

by Juan J. Alonzo

Overview

Badmen, Bandits, and Folk Heroes is a comparative study of the literary and cinematic representation of Mexican American masculine identity from early twentieth-century adventure stories and movie Westerns through contemporary self-representations by Chicano/a writers and filmmakers. In this deeply compelling book, Juan J. Alonzo proposes a reconsideration of the early stereotypical depictions of Mexicans in fiction and film: rather than viewing stereotypes as unrelentingly negative, Alonzo presents them as part of a complex apparatus of identification and disavowal. Furthermore, Alonzo reassesses Chicano/a self-representation in literature and film, and argues that the Chicano/a expression of identity is characterized less by essentialism than by an acknowldgement of the contingent status of present-day identity formations.

Alonzo opens his provocative study with a fresh look at the adventure stories of Stephen Crane and the silent Western movies of D. W. Griffith. He also investigates the conflation of the greaser, the bandit, and the Mexican revolutionary into one villainous figure in early Western movies and, more broadly, traces the development of the badman in Westerns. He newly interrogates the writings of Américo Paredes regarding the makeup of Mexican masculinity, and productively trains his analytic eye on the recent films of Jim Mendiola and the contemporary poetry of Evangelina Vigil.

Throughout Badmen, Bandits, and Folk Heroes, Alonzo convincingly demonstrates how fiction and films that formerly appeared one-dimensional in their treatment of Mexicans and Mexican Americans actually offer surprisingly multifarious and ambivalent representations. At the same time, his valuation of indeterminacy, contingency, and hybridity in contemporary cultural production creates new possibilities for understanding identity formation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780816528684
Publisher:	University of Arizona Press
Publication date:	09/15/2009
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Juan J. Alonzo is an assistant professor of English at Texas A&M University.

Table of Contents

List of Figures
Introduction: Ambivalence and Contingency in the Representation of Mexican Identity
1 The Greaser in Stephen Crane’s Mexican Stories and D. W. Griffith’s Early Westerns
2 Greasers, Bandits, and Revolutionaries: The Conflation of Mexican Identity Representation, 1910-1920
3 The Western’s Ambivalence and the Mexican Badman
4 Stereotype, Idealism, and Contingency in the Revolutionary’s Depiction
5 Gregorio Cortez in the Chicano/a Imaginary and American Popular Culture
6 Reformulating Hybrid Identities and Re-inscribing History in Contemporary Chicano/a Literature and Film
Epilogue: The Return of the Stereotypical Repressed: Why Stereotypes Still Matter
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

“Alonzo’s conceptualization of ‘stereotypes’ as a fluid category of identity formation is simply brilliant.” —María Herrera-Sobek, co-editor of Culture across Borders: Mexican Immigration and Popular Culture

"Provides a thought-provoking political stance on the ethics of reading stereotypes in historical and contemporary written and visual texts, and in everyday life."—Bulletin of Latin American Research

From the Publisher