Queer Tropical Frames: New Representations of Queerness in Contemporary Latin American Cinema

Abstract

Queer Tropical Frames explores the convergence of queer theory, decolonial thinking, and film studies in Latin America. Situated within this relatively unexplored intersection, this thesis draws critical attention to the place of queerness in the twenty-first-century upsurge of Latin American LGBTIQ-themed cinema. In my analysis, I challenge the pervasive Euro-centric focus in film studies about the region adopting an overarching decolonial framework. I emphasise the potential of using cultural and theoretical articulations on sexuality and gender from the region to interrogate its own queer visual culture. Acknowledging the continent and its cinema as a locus of knowledge production, I leverage regional models of non-normative sexualities and gender developed by thinkers from Latin America (pre- and post-queer theory). Such an endeavour does not dismiss the relevance of voices from the Global North concerning cinema and queerness. Still, it consistently engages with them against the backdrop of ideas specifically formulated within the Latin American context. This project thus seeks to disrupt the unidirectional flow of theories and concepts from the Global North to the Global South in an attempt to position Latin American (queer) cultures as an active participant in the global discourse about queerness. Consequently, Queer Tropical Frames aims to transpose decolonial inquiries about sexuality and gender into the domain of film studies in Latin America. If a decolonial perspective involves the imperative to translate, challenge, and adapt categories of queerness primarily formulated in North America and Europe, I inquire how forms of representation undergo a parallel transformation process. What are the nuances that queer themes and tropes show in contemporary Latin American cinema? Which formal and narrative strategies are employed to articulate the specificity of the region’s experiences of sex and gender dissidence? In a dual exchange, I not only employ queer articulations from the region to analyse the films but also employ the films to deepen our understanding of non-conforming sexuality and gender in Latin America. How do these films propose models that contribute to our nuanced comprehension of queerness in the Global South? Do they align with or diverge from the general assumptions about queerness in the Global North? My decolonial approach does not aspire to reconstruct a native ancestral sex-gender system or to deny the flow of international categories of queerness. Instead, it aims to delineate the distinctive features that contribute to a contemporary formulation of diverse queer theories and the depiction of queerness on the screen.