Dangerous Curves: Latina Bodies in the Media. Isabel Molina-Guzmán. New York: New York University Press, 2010. 256 pp.
Latina/o Stars in U.S. Eyes: The Making and Meanings of Film and TV Stardom. Mary C. Beltrán. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2009. 222 pp.
Latina/o Stars in U.S. Eyes: The Making and Meanings of Film and TV Stardom and Dangerous Curves: Latina Bodies in the Media join other recent books about Chicano, Hispanic, and Latino issues and contribute to research about class, ethnicity, gender, race, and sexual orientation in different but important ways.
These books by Mary C. Beltrán and Isabel Molina-Guzmán, as well as others—including Latina Teens, Migration, and Popular Culture by Lucila Vargas (Peter Lang, 2009) and Latino/a Communication Studies, edited by Angharad N. Valdivia (Peter Lang, 2008)—represent a continuing interest in the portrayal of people of color in global popular culture. Latina/o Stars in U.S. Eyes and Dangerous Curves, which complement and reinforce each other, belong side by side on the bookshelves of media scholars committed to making sense of proliferating images of “Latinidad” in the United States and abroad.
Marketed primarily to those interested in women of color and popular culture, both of these books are organized around the lives and careers of individual entertainment and news celebrities. They deal primarily with American texts and audiences, but refer often to international issues, and both inform and advocate for social change. Although the titles might indicate otherwise, the authors refer to both female and male icons.
In each of their works, both Beltrán and Molina-Guzmán employ aesthetic, cultural, historical, sociological, and textual criticism. Both books include extensive analysis of the life and career of actress and entertainer Jennifer Lopez, and Dangerous Curves addresses the media representation of sexual orientation in discussions about Lopez, America Ferrera (the star of Ugly Betty), and the 2002 film Frida.
Latina/o Stars in U.S. Eyes is divided into seven chapters that feature Mexican actress Dolores Del Rio, who became a star during the silent film era; Desi Arnaz, actor, musician, and television producer best known for starring in I Love Lucy (1950-1957) with his wife Lucille Ball; and Puerto Rican performer Rita Moreno, who was celebrated for her film roles during the 1950s and 1960s. Freddie Prinze, the Puerto Rican and German-Hungarian actor who played Francisco (Chico) Rodriguez in Chico and the Man (1974-1978), is the focus of this chapter. Also featured in subsequent chapters include Edward James Olmos, star of Stand and Deliver (1988) and other 1980s films; Jennifer Lopez, who has starred in films as diverse as Selena (1997), The Wedding Planner (2001), and Angel Eyes (2001); and Jessica Alba and other recent examples of “racial hybridity” in contemporary film and television.
Because the book covers developments from the 1920s to the present, it necessarily relies upon summary and broad brush strokes. The encyclopedic nature of the study suggests that numerous celebrities may be omitted and that discussion of themes may be secondary to the development of a timeline. For example, the popularity of figures such as Antonio Banderas, Benjamin Bratt, Penelope Cruz, Benicio del Toro, Salma Hayek, and Jimmy Smits may eclipse that of other stars featured in each chapter; although these and other significant figures surface in the study, the author does not analyze their impact on cultural attitudes. It might be that consideration of their lives and careers would either reinforce Beltrán’s arguments or lead to different conclusions.
Some opinions in Latina/o Stars in U.S. Eyes would benefit from further support. Examples include claims that Jennifer Lopez’s relationship with entertainer Marc Anthony “has appeared … of less interest” to American audiences than her marriage to Ben Affleck; that “backlash” against Lopez and Affleck resulted in some of their projects “faring poorly,” and that Alba “notably has had many doors open to her that are still not available to other Latinas, in large part because of her off-white appearance and image.” Interviews with actors and performers who are still living might inform the study, as would lengthier discussions of these and similar issues.
Nonetheless, the author promises in the introduction to address the ways in which “star images reflected or challenged the shifting status of Latina/os in relation to racial, class, and gendered notions, and notions of citizenship and national identity,” and she succeeds admirably with this goal. An assistant professor of communication arts and Chicana/o and Latina/o studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Beltrán here extends the work she began as co-editor of Mixed Race Hollywood (NYU Press, 2008).
The value of Latina/o Stars in U.S. Eyes is its expansive view. The sheer number of references and its conclusions make this resource valuable, and its reminder that “Latinidad as constructed by Hollywood still rests on notions of distinctive elements and traits, a conundrum with which actors have to contend” remains essential.
For its part, Molina-Guzmán’s Dangerous Curves features Jennifer Lopez on its cover, and is organized around case studies. Like Latina/o Stars in U.S. Eyes, it critiques film and television texts but also addresses representations in tabloid newspapers, broadcast, print, and online news venues, and in online discussions. Molina-Guzmán includes opinions about “Latinidad” from journalists, readers, scholars, and viewers in the United States as well as in Mexico, Latin America, the Spanish Caribbean, and other international locales.
Problematizing perspectives on what constitutes “Latinidad” in today’s popular culture, Molina-Guzmán relies upon numerous examples: “While at times the ethnic and racial signifiers of Latinidad may work in concert with one another, such as media representations of Salma Hayek as Mexican and brown, at other times they may contradict our commonsense assumptions about Latinidad, such as white Cameron Diaz’s more recent identification as Latina.” By examining audience responses to media portrayals, she draws conclusions about the way some discussions “destabilize dominant U.S. ethnic and racial classifications of nationhood and citizenship.”
Chapter titles in Dangerous Curves suggest the breadth of Molina-Guzmán’s research and the nature of the case studies. In order, the chapters are “Saving Elián: Cubana Motherhood, Latina Immigration, and the Nation,” which deals with the 2000 international custody battle involving Elián González; “Disciplining J.Lo: Booty Politics in Tabloid News,” which addresses the objectification of Jennifer Lopez by both fans and critics; and “Becoming Frida: Latinidad and the Production of Latina Authenticity,” which addresses Salma Hayek’s award-winning portrayal of artist Frida Kahlo and the international debate about Hayek’s racial and ethnic identity, and Kahlo’s sexual orientation, that followed the film. Other chapters include “‘Ugly’ America Dreams the American Dream,” which deals with America Ferrera and her portrayal of Betty Suarez in the television hit Ugly Betty, and “Maid in Hollywood: Producing Latina Labor in an Anti-Immigration Imaginary.”
Like the introduction, titled “Mapping the Place of Latinas in the U.S. Media,” the conclusion grounds the study in theory and clarifies contemporary debates about international perspectives on what constitutes racial and ethnic identity. “In the decade since I began the research for this book,” Molina-Guzmán writes, “the visibility of Latinas in the global mediascape has proliferated.” Although she clearly celebrates this fact, Molina-Guzmán also calls for what she calls more “nuanced” portrayals: “What I and other audiences expect from the media is not to get rid of commercially profitable or negative news depictions of Latinidad but instead to create more opportunities for nuanced, compelling, and diverse articulations of Latina/o identity.”
An associate professor of communications and Latina/o Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Molina-Guzmán might consider extensive interviews—not only with those who blog, but with the entertainment and news celebrities whose narratives she appropriates. The perspectives of Jessica Alba, Cameron Diaz, the family members of Elián Gonzalez, and others might reinforce or undercut some of Molina-Guzmán’s claims.
Like many scholars immersed in a study of class, ethnicity, gender, race, and sexual orientation, Molina-Guzmán appreciates any “unique opening for meaningful conversations about the media, social justice, and ethnic and racial equality” in our classes and our intellectual communities. Not incidentally, of course, she and Beltrán have produced academically rigorous texts that will facilitate those conversations.
JAN WHITT
University of Colorado