Includes filmography (pages 231-233). Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents:
Introduction / Elizabeth Osborne and Sofia Ruiz-Alfaro -- Restoring names, stories, and voices for cinematographic maids : toward a new poetics of domestic service in recent Argentine films / Maria Julia Rossi -- moving beyond maternalism : negotiating models of womanhood in La Nana, Cama adentro, and Hilda / Elizabeth Osborne -- Leftovers no more : affect, food, and power in recent Latin American films on domestic work / Karina Elizabeth Vázquez -- Serious camp : Juan Gabriel's queer repertoire in ¿Qué le dijiste a Dios? / Olivia Cosentino -- Defamiliarizing the maid : Alicia Scherson's play / Susana Domingo Amestoy -- Beyond tropes : otherness and the identity of the Brazilian maid in Domésticas-O Filme and Doméstica / Maurício Sellmann-Oliveira -- Partial affection: The place(s) of female domestic workers in recent Brazilian cinema / Carlos Cortez Minchillo -- Domestic labor and the crisis of care in La tierra y la sombra and La sirga / Marcelo Carosi -- Domestic matters: Hollywood and the politics of representing la doméstica in Babel and Cake -- Sofia Ruiz-Alfaro -- Filmography / Kerry Moynihan.
Summary:
This volume explores the character of the domestic worker in twenty-first century Latin American cinema and analyzes how recent filmic representations of the housemaid question the marginalization of domestic servants, in particular women, by making them the center of their narratives, their families, and society. The essays in this book posit the female domestic worker as an emergent subjectivity, a complex character who problematizes and contests the hierarchical power structures within the family dynamics and new socioeconomic orders found in contemporary Latin America. Readers will find a variety of representations across the continent as well as transnational commonalities of the cinematic figure and role of the housemaid, including the negotiation of a multilayered politics of affection in the framework of prevalent paternalism, and the complex and contradictory dynamic between private and public spaces, where domestic paid labor occupies a central role in maintaining gender, class, and ethnic inequalities.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.