Mediating Hispanidad: screening the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary

This dissertation examines the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary as a critical site for the negotiation and promotion of a broader transatlantic identity, increasingly mediated through film and media production, distribution and consumption from Spain, Latin America and the United States. Since the 1990s, Spanish-language cinema has extended its national and linguistic boundaries through a number of Spanish-Latin American coproductions and films that either thematically or industrially engage with both regions as a common cultural and linguistic market. Similarly, the 1990s have seen the growth of U.S.-Latino and Spanish-language media that connect the U.S. with Latin America and, increasingly, Spain. This transatlantic and transhemispheric mapping recalls the Hispanic Atlantic and the period of colonization that created a commonality of language, religion and culture across these geographic spaces. Because the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary encompasses a wide range of national film and media industries, with their own industrial history, this dissertation largely focuses on Spain’s role in mediating a transatlantic imaginary and thus, relies on case studies that focus on the changing face of Spanish national cinema and its role in fostering cinematic productions across the Atlantic. Yet, it also occasionally explores other national and/or local film contexts — Cuba, Mexico, Colombia, Bolivia and the United States — in order to demonstrate the dialogic nature of these exchanges. ❧ Although the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary is mobilized as a form of resistance against the global dominance of the Hollywood industry, these imaginings are fraught with internal tensions given their colonial history and the national, gendered, sexual and racial legacies that continue to structure identities both within and across the Hispanic Atlantic. These legacies shape the industrial structure of these collaborations, but are also evident within the narratives themselves. While attempts to cultivate a Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary across the Spanish-speaking world is not a recent phenomenon and can be traced to the Spanish colonial project as a whole, this dissertation uses the Hispanic Atlantic as a framework that explores the power relations inherent within singular conceptions of Hispanic identity, culture and politics. With this in mind, the films and media texts discussed in this dissertation focus on gender, race and national identity as instrumental to reconfiguring transatlantic and transhemispheric bonds. Rather than viewing these overlapping film and media structures and practices as the result of a top-down and univocal articulation, the Hispanic-Atlantic imaginary demonstrates that these efforts are more dialogic in nature, thus, incorporating different national and multicultural voices that comprise the Spanish-speaking world.